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ILLIAM 
QUEUX 

AUTHOR OF 

RMAN SPIES 

^ ENGLAND ,, 



SERIOUS 



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it 

BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 



GERMAN SPIES IN ENGLAND 

An Exposure : By William Le Queux 

(60th THOUSAND) 1/. Net 

What Great Men Think 

THE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON says :— 

'. ' Your new book deserves the serious attention of the authorities, as it 
vividly depicts a very grave national peril." 
THE EARL OF HALSBURY says :— 

' • The public has not yet appreciated the extent to which Germany has ex- 
pended money and pains in spying. Your book will help to make it known.'* 
THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH says :— 

■i yonr book is most instructive. The national democratic movement 
aroused by the war should be employed to expiate all hostile aliens, 
from the highest to the lowest." 
VISCOUNT GAL WAY says :— 

"Your book is most interesting. I sincerely hope it will cause more 
attention to be paid to the danger to England from German spies." 
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD says :— 

" I am glad attention is being so prominently drawn to this most 
important subject." 
LORD LEITH OF FYVIE says :— 

" Your book is most serviceable. The Emperor William's speech shows 
how treacherously brutal is his madness for world power, and it opens the 
eyes of all Americans who are inclined to admire the Emperor. It 
shows his intention to run the elections and to boss the United States. 
I hope you will be able to demonstrate who are the degenerates who are 
betraying their country by active sympathy and assistance to the enemy." 

What the Press Thinks 

THE DAILY MAIL says :— 

" It is a book which should be carefully studied from cover to cover. 
The present arrangement for dealing with Spies Mr. Le Queux pronounces 
altogether unsatisfactory." 
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH says :— 

" The discovery of the German Spy system has, we believe, been made 
in time, and Mr. Le Queux must take his share in the credit of the dis- 
covery. His self-sacrificing energy is vindicated to the world. The stories 
which he tells will come as an alarming revelation to the public." 
THE GLOBE says :— 

"The audacity of some German agents in England, as revealed by 
Mr. Le Queux, is only equalled by their enterprise. Mr. Le Queux em- 
phasises the point that it is those rich Germans of the Schulenberg type, 
for whom some one in our Government or administration seems to have so 
unwholesome a tenderness, who are the most dangerous. There are many 
astonishing statements in this most amazing book." 
THE PALL MALL GAZETTE says :— 

" Mr. Le Queux has devoted special attention to German Spies, and his 
book will be read with much interest." 
THE EVENING STANDARD says:— 

' ' Mr. Le Queux has here written on Spies and spying, as sensational 
a book as any of his romances. Indeed, it may be questioned whether 
Mr. Le Queux would have gone the length of introducing into a fictional 
plot so extraordinary a chapter as that in which he reports one of the 
Kaiser's speeches." 
THE SCOTSMAN says :— 

" Mr. Le Queux gives a resume* of espionage methods. He goes over 
the recent Spy convictions, and describes a considerable number of other 
cases, unpunished, which have come under his own observation. He has 
certainly laboured hard to impress the danger of the German system of 
spying on the mind of the British public, and gives several instances of the 
ease with which communication with Germany can still be carried out." 



BRITAIN'S 
DEADLY PERIL 

Are we Told the Truth ? 



BY 



WILLIAM LE QUEUX 

M 

AUTHOR OF M GERMAN SPIES IN ENGLAND" 



THIRD EDITION 



LONDON 

STANLEY PAUL & GO 

31 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C. 



-$\srt 



VA 



First published in 1976 
Reprinted March 30, 1915 
Reprinted April 19, 191$ 



Copyright in the United State* of America &$? 
William Le Qutux, 1915 



CONTENTS 



FOREWORD 

PAGB 

The Unknown To-morrow ... 7 



CHAPTER I 
The Peril of " Muddling Through " . 13 

CHAPTER II 
The Peril of Exploiting the Poor . 31 

CHAPTER III 
The Peril of kot Doing Enough . . 49 

CHAPTER IV 
The Peril of the Censorship ... 66 

CHAPTER V 
The Peril of the Press Bureau . . 81 



6 CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VI 

FAGS 

The Peril of the Enemy Alien . . 96 



CHAPTER VII 
The Peril of Deluding the Public . 119 

CHAPTER VIII 
The Peril of Invasion . . . .139 

CHAPTER IX 
The Peril of Apathy . . . .148 

CHAPTER X 
The Peril of Stifling the Truth . .160 

CHAPTER XI 

Facts to Remember . . . .171 



FOREWORD 

THE UNKNOWN TO-MORROW 

The following pages — written partly as a sequel 
to my book " German Spies in England," which 
has met with such wide popular favour — are, I 
desire to assure the reader, inspired solely by a 
stern spirit of patriotism. 

This is not a book of " scaremongerings," but of 
plain, hard, indisputable facts. 

It is a demand for the truth to be told, and a 
warning that, by the present policy of secrecy and 
shuffle, a distinct feeling of distrust has been 
aroused, and is growing more and more apparent. 
No sane man will, of course, ask for any facts con- 
cerning the country's resources or its intentions, or 
indeed any information upon a single point which, 
in the remotest way, could be of any advantage to 
the barbaric hordes who are ready to sweep upon us. 

But what the British people to-day demand is a 
sound and definite pronouncement which will take 
them, to a certain extent, into the confidence of 
the Government — as apart from the War Office, 
against which no single word of criticism should be 
raised — and at the same time deal effectively with 
certain matters which, being little short of public 
scandals, have irritated and inflamed public opinion 
at an hour when every man in our Empire should 



8 FOREWORD 

put forth his whole strength for his God, his King, 
and his country. 

Germany is facing the present situation with a 
sound, businesslike policy, without any vacillation, 
or any attempt to shift responsibility from one 
Department of the State to another. Are we doing 
the same ? 

What rule or method can be discerned, for 
example, in a system which allows news to appear 
in the papers in Scotland which is suppressed in 
the newspapers in England ? Why, indeed, should 
one paper in England be permitted to print facts, 
and another, published half a mile away, be de- 
barred from printing the self-same words ? 

The public — who, since August 4th last, are no 
longer school-children under the Head-Mastership 
of the Prime-Minister-for-the-Time-Being — are now 
wondering what all this curious censorship means, 
and for what reason such an unreliable institution — 
an institution not without its own scandals, and 
employing a thousand persons of varying ideas and 
warped notions — should have been established. 
They can quite understand the urgent necessity of 
preventing a horde of war correspondents, at the 
front, sending home all sorts of details regarding 
our movements and intentions, but they cannot 
understand why a Government offer of £100 reward, 
published on placards all over Scotland for informa- 
tion regarding secret bases of petrol, should be for- 
bidden to be even mentioned in England. 

They cannot understand why the Admiralty 
should issue a notice warning the public that 
German spies, posing as British officers, are visiting 
Government factories while at the same time the 
Under-Secretary for War declares that all enemy 
aliens are known, and are constantly under police 



THE UNKNOWN TO-MORROW 9 

surveillance. They cannot understand either why, 
in face of the great imports of foodstuffs, and the 
patriotic movement on the part of Canada and our 
Overseas Dominions concerning our wheat supply, 
prices should have been allowed to increase so 
alarmingly, and unscrupulous merchants should be 
permitted to exploit the poor as they have done. 
They are mystified by the shifty shuttlecock policy 
which is being pursued towards the question of 
enemy aliens, and the marked disinclination of the 
authorities to make even the most superficial 
inquiry regarding cases of suspected espionage, not- 
withstanding the fact that German spies have 
actually been recognised among us by refugees from 
Antwerp and other Belgian cities. 

The truth, which cannot be disguised, is that by 
the Government's present policy, and the amusing 
vagaries of its Press Censorship, the public are daily 
growing more and more apathetic concerning the 
war. While, on the one hand, we see recruiting 
appeals in all the clever guises of smart modern 
advertising, yet on the other, by the action of the 
authorities themselves, the man-in-the-street is 
being soothed into the belief that all goes well, and 
that, in consequence, no more men are needed and 
nobody need worry further. 

We are told by many newspapers that Germany 
is at the end of her tether : that food supplies are 
fast giving out, that she has lost millions of men, 
that her people are frantic, that a " Stop the War " 
party has already arisen in Berlin, and that the 
offensive on the eastern frontier is broken. At 
home, the authorities would have us believe that 
there is no possibility of invasion, that German 
submarines are " pirates " — poor consolation in- 
deed — that all alien enemies are really a deserving 

1* 



10 FOREWORD 

hardworking class of dear good people, and that 
there is no spy-peril. A year ago the British public 
would, perhaps, have believed all this. To-day they 
refuse to do so. Why they do not, I have here 
attempted to set out ; I have tried to reveal some- 
thing of the perils which beset our nation, and to 
urge the reader to pause and reflect for himself. 
Every word I have written in this book, though I 
have been fearless and unsparing in my criticism, 
has been written with an honest and patriotic inten- 
tion, for I feel that it is my duty, as an Englishman, 
in these days of national peril to take up my pen 
— without political bias — solely for the public good. 

I ask the reader to inquire for himself, to ascertain 
how cleverly Germany has hoodwinked us, and to 
fix the blame upon those who wilfully, and for 
political reasons, closed their eyes to the truth. I 
would ask the reader to remember the formation in 
Germany — under the guidance of the Kaiser — of 
the Society for the Promotion of Better Relations 
between Germany and England, and how the 
Kaiser appointed, as president, a certain Herr von 
Holleben. I would further ask the reader to re- 
member my modest effort to dispel the pretty 
illusion placed before the British public by exposing, 
in The Daily Telegraph, in March 1912, the fact 
that this very Herr von Holleben, posing as a 
champion of peace, was actually the secret emissary 
sent by the Kaiser to the United States in 1910, 
with orders to make an anti-English press pro- 
paganda in that country ! And a week after my 
exposure the Emperor was compelled to dismiss him 
from his post. 

Too long has dust been thrown in our eyes, both 
abroad and at home. 

Let every Briton fighting for his country, and 



THE UNKNOWN TO-MOBROW 11 

working for his country's good, remember that even 
though there be a political truce to-day, yet the 
Day of Awakening must dawn sooner or later. On 
that day, with the conscience of the country fully 
stirred, the harmless — but to-day powerless — voter 
will have something bitter and poignant to say when 
he pays the bill. He will then recollect some hard 
facts, and ask himself many plain questions. He 
will put to himself calmly the problem whether the 
present German hatred of England is not mainly 
due to the weak shuffling sentimentalism and 
opportunism of Germanophils in high places. And 
he will then search out Britain's betrayers, and place 
them in the pillory. 

Assuredly, when the time comes, all these things 
— and many more — will be remembered. And the 
dawn of the Unknown To-morrow will, I feel 
assured, bring with it many astounding and drastic 
changes. 



William Le Queux. 



Devonshire Club, S.W. 
April 1915. 






BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

CHAPTER I 

THE PERIL OF " MUDDLING THROUGH " 

Has Britain, in the course of her long history, ever 
been prepared for a great war ? I do not believe 
she has ; she certainly was not ready last August, 
when the Kaiser launched his thunderbolt upon 
the world. 

Perhaps, paradoxical as it may seem, this per- 
petual unreadiness may be, in a sense, part of Bri- 
tain's strength. 

We are a people slow of speech, and slow to 
anger. It takes much — very much — to rouse the 
British nation to put forth its full strength. "Be- 
ware of the wrath of the man slow to anger " is a 
useful working maxim, and it may be that the 
difficulty of arousing England is, in some degree, 
a measure of her terrible power once she is awakened. 

Twice or thrice, at least, within living memory 
we have been caught all unready when a great 
crisis burst upon us — in the Crimea, in South Africa, 
and now in the greatest world-conflict ever seen. 
Hitherto, thanks to the amazing genius for im- 
provisation which is characteristic of our race, we 
have " muddled through " somehow, often sorely 

13 



14 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

smitten, sorely checked, but roused by reverses to 
further and greater efforts. 

The bulldog tenacity that has ever been our 
salvation has been aroused in time, and we have 
passed successfully through ordeals which might 
have broken the spirit and crushed the resistance 
of nations whose mental and physical fibre was less 
high and less enduring. 

We have " muddled through " in the past : 
shall we " muddle through " again ? It is the 
merest truism — patent to ail the world — that when 
Germany declared war, we were quite unready for 
a contest. For years the nation had turned a deaf 
ear to all warnings. The noble efforts of the late 
Lord Roberts, who gave the last years of his illus- 
trious life — despite disappointments, and the rebuffs 
of people in high places who ought to have known 
— nay, who did know — that his words were literally 
true, passed unheeded. 

Lord Roberts, the greatest soldier of the Victorian 
era, a man wise in war, and of the most transcendent 
sincerity, was snubbed and almost insulted, inside 
and outside the House of Commons, by a parcel of 
upstarts who, in knowledge and experience of the 
world and of the subject, were not fit to black his 
boots. " An alarmist and scaremonger " was per- 
haps the least offensive name that these worthies 
could find for him : and it was plainly hinted that 
he was an old man in his dotage. Lulled into an 
unshakable complacency by the smooth assurances 
of placeholders in comfortable jobs, the nation 
remained serenely asleep, and never was a country 
less ready for the storm that burst upon us last 
August. I had, in my writings — " The Invasion of 
England " and other works — -also endeavoured to 
awaken the public ; but if they would not listen to 



THE PERIL OF " MUDDLING THROUGH " 15 

" Bobs/' it was hardly surprising that they jeered 
at me. 

I am speaking of the nation as a whole. To their 
eternal honour let it be said that there were never- 
theless some who, for years, had foreseen the danger, 
and had done what lay in their power to meet it. 
Foremost among these we must place Mr. Winston 
Churchill, and the group of brilliant officers who are 
now the chiefs of the British Army on the Continent. 
To them, at least, I hope history will do full justice. 
It was no mere coincidence that just before the 
outbreak of war our great fleet— the mightiest 
Armada that the world has ever seen — was assembled 
at Spithead, ready, to the last shell and the last 
man, for any eventuality. 

It was no mere coincidence that the magnificent 
First Division at Aldershot, trained to the minute 
by men who knew their business, were engaged 
when war broke out in singularly appropriate 
" mobilisation exercises." All honour to the men 
who foresaw the world-peril, and did their utmost 
to make our pitiably insufficient forces ready, as 
far as fitness and organisation could make them 
ready, for the great Day when their courage and 
endurance were to be so severely tested. 

But when all this is said and admitted, it is clear 
that our safety, in the early days of the war, hung 
by a hair. Afloat, of course, we were more than 
a match for anything Germany could do, and our 
Fleet has locked our enemy in with a strangling 
grip that we hope is slowly choking out her industrial 
and commercial life. Ashore, however, our position 
was perilous in the extreme. Men's hair whitened 
visibly during those awful days when the tiny 
British Army, fighting heroically every step of the 
way against overwhelming odds, was driven ever 



16 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

back and back until, on the banks of the Marne, 
it suddenly turned at bay and, by sheer matchless 
valour, hurled the legions of the Kaiser back to 
ruin and defeat. The retreat was stayed, the 
enemy was checked and driven back, but the 
margin by which disaster was averted and turned 
into triumph was so narrow that nothing but the 
most superb heroism on the part of our gallant lads 
could have saved the situation. We had neglected 
all warnings, and we narrowly escaped paying an 
appalling price in the destruction of the flower of 
the British Army. With insufficient forces, we had 
again " muddled through " by the dogged valour of 
the British private. 

To-day we are engaged in " muddling through " 
on a scale unexampled in our history. The Govern- 
ment have taken power to raise the British Army 
to a total of three million men. In our leisurely 
way we have begun to make new armies in the 
face of an enemy who for fifty years has been 
training every man to arms, in the face of an enemy 
who for ten or fifteen years at least has been steadily, 
openly, and avowedly preparing for the Day when 
he could venture, with some prospect of success, 
to challenge the sea supremacy by which we live, 
and move, and have our being, and lay our great 
Empire in the dust. 

We neglected all warnings ; we calmly ignored 
our enemy's avowed intentions ; we closed our eyes 
and jeered at all those who told the truth ; we 
deliberately, and of choice, elected to wait until 
war was upon us to begin our usual process of 
" muddling through." Truly we are an amazing 
people ! Yet we should remember that the days 
when one Englishman was better than ten foreigners 
have passed for ever. 



THE PERIL OF " MUDDLING THROUGH M 17 

Naturally, our preference for waiting till the 
battle opened before we began to train for the 
fight led us into some of the most amazing muddles 
that even our military history can boast of. When 
the tocsin of war rang out, our young men poured 
to the colours from every town and village in the 
country. Everybody but the War Office expected 
it. The natural result followed : recruiting offices 
were simply " snowed under " with men, and for 
weeks we saw the most amazing chaos. The flood 
of men could neither be equipped nor housed, nor 
trained, and confusion reigned supreme. We had 
an endless series of scandals at camps, into which I 
do not propose to enter : probably, with all the 
goodwill in the world, they were unavoidable. 
Still the flood of men poured in. The War Office 
grew desperate. It was, clearly, beyond the 
capacity of the organisation to handle the mass of 
recruits, and then the War Office committed perhaps 
its greatest blunder. Unable to accept more men, 
it raised the physical standard for recruits. No 
one seems to have conceived the idea that it would 
have been better to take the names of the men and 
call them up as they were needed. Naturally the 
public seized upon the idea that enough men had 
been obtained, and there was an instant slump in 
recruiting which, despite the most strenuous of 
advertising campaigns — carried out on the methods 
of a vendor of patent medicines — has, unfortunately, 
not yet been overcome. 

Following, came a period of unexampled chaos at 
the training-centres. Badly lodged, badly fed, clothed 
in ragged odds and ends of " uniforms," without 
rifles or bayonets, it is simply a marvel that the 
men stuck to their duty, and it is surely a glowing 
testimony to their genuine patriotism. I do not 



18 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

wish ta rake up old scandals, and I am not going 
to indulge in carping criticism of the authorities 
because they were not able to handle matters with 
absolute smoothness when, each week, they were 
getting very nearly a year's normal supply of 
recruits. Confusion and chaos were bound to be, 
and I think the men — on the whole — realised the 
difficulties, and made the best of a very trying 
situation. But they were Britons ! My object is 
simply to show how serious was our peril through 
our unpreparedness. If our enemy, in that time 
of preparation, could have struck a blow directly 
at us, we must, inevitably, have gone under in 
utter ruin. Happily, our star was in the ascendant. 
The magnificent heroism of Belgium, the noble 
recovery of the French nation after their first 
disastrous surprise, the unexampled valour of our 
Army, and the silent pressure of the Navy, saved 
us from the peril that encompassed us. Once again 
we had " muddled through " perhaps the worst 
part of our task. 

No one can yet say that we are safe. This war 
is very far indeed from being won, for there is yet 
much to do, and many grave perils still threaten 
us. It is, perhaps, small consolation to know that 
most of the perils we brought upon ourselves by 
our persistent and foolish refusal to face plain and 
obvious facts : by our toleration of so-called 
statesmen who, fascinated by the Kaiser's glib talk, 
came very near to betraying England by their 
refusal to tell the country the truth, or even, with- 
out telling the country, to make adequate prepara- 
tions to meet a danger which had been foreseen by 
every Chancellory in Europe for years past. It can 
never be said that we were not warned, plainly and 
unmistakably. The report of the amazing speech 



THE PERIL OF " MUDDLING THROUGH " 19 

of the Kaiser, which I have recorded elsewhere, I 
placed in the hands of the British Secret Service 
as early as 1908, and the fact that it had been 
delivered was soon abundantly verified by con- 
fidential inquiries in official circles in Berlin. Yet, 
with the knowledge of that speech before them, 
Ministers could still be found to assure us that 
Germany was our firm and devoted friend ! 

The Kaiser, in the course of the secret speech in 
question, openly outlined his policy and said : 

" Our plans have been most carefully laid and pre- 
pared by our General Staff. Preparations have been 
made to convey at a word a German army of invasion 
of a strength able to cope with any and all the troops 
that Great Britain can muster against us. It is too 
early yet to fix the exact date when the blow shall 
be struck, but I will say this : that we shall strike as 
soon as I have a sufficiently large fleet of Zeppelins 
at my disposal. I have given orders for the hurried 
construction of more airships of the improved Zeppelin 
type, and when these are ready we shall destroy 
England's North Sea, Channel, and Atlantic fleets, 
after which nothing on earth can prevent the landing 
of our army on British soil and its triumphal march 
to London. 

" You will desire to know how the outbreak of 
hostilities will be brought about. I can assure you 
on this point. Certainly we shall not have to go far 
to find a just cause for war. My army of spies, 
scattered over Great Britain and France, as it is over 
North and South America, as well as all the other 
parts of the world where German interests may come 
to a clash with a foreign Power, will take good care 
of that. I have issued already some time since 
secret orders that will at the proper moment accom- 
plish what we desire. 

" I shall not rest and be satisfied until all the 
countries and territories that once were German, or 



20 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

where greater numbers of my former subjects now 
live, have become a part of the great mother country, 
acknowledging me as their supreme lord in war and 
peace. Even now I rule supreme in the United 
States, where almost one-half of the population is 
either of German birth or of German descent, and 
where three million German voters do my bidding 
at the Presidential elections. No American Adminis- 
tration could remain in power against the will of the 
German voters, who . . . control the destinies of the 
vast Republic beyond the sea. 

" I have secured a strong foothold for Germany in 
the Near East, and when the Turkish ' pilaf ' pie will 
be partitioned, Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine — in 
short, the overland route to India — will become our 
property. But to obtain this we must first crush 
England and France/' 

And, in the face of those words, we still went an 
money-grubbing and pleasure-seeking ! 

If ever the British Empire, following other 
great Empires of the past, plunges downward to 
rack and ruin, we may rest assured that the reason 
will be our reliance on our ancient and stereotyped 
policy of " muddling through." 

I am glad to think that in the conduct of the 
present campaign we have been spared those 
scandals of the baser type which, in the past, have 
been such an unsavoury feature of almost every 
great war in which we have been engaged. Minor 
instances of fraud and peculation, of supplying 
doubtful food, etc., have no doubt occurred. Human 
nature being what it is, it could hardly be expected 
that we could raise, train, equip, and supply an 
army numbered by millions without some unscru- 
pulous and unpatriotic individuals seizing the 
opportunity to line their pockets by unlawful means. 



THE PERIL OF " MUDDLING THROUGH " 21 

We hear occasional stories of huts unfit for human 
habitation, of food in camp hardly fit for human 
consumption. On the whole, however, it is cor- 
dially agreed — and it is only fair to say — that 
there has been an entire absence of the shocking 
scandals of the type which revolted the nation 
during the Crimean campaign. Much has been 
said about the War Office arrangement with Mr. 
Meyer for the purchase of timber. But the main 
allegation, even in this case, is that the War Office 
made an exceedingly bad and foolish bargain, and 
Mr. Meyer an exceedingly good one. Indeed it is 
not even suggested that the transaction involved 
anything in the nature of fraud. It seems rather 
to be a plea that the purely commercial side of war 
would be infinitely better conducted by committees 
of able business men than by permanent officials 
of the War Office, who are, after all, not very 
commercial. 

Undoubtedly this is true. We should be spared 
a good deal of the muddling and waste involved 
in our wars if, on the outbreak of hostilities, the 
War Office promptly asked the leading business 
men of the community to form committees and take 
over and manage for the benefit of the nation the 
purely commercial branches of the work. Yet I 
suppose, under our system of government, such an 
obvious common- sense procedure as this could hardly 
be hoped for. We continue to leave vast com- 
mercial undertakings in the hands of the men who 
are not bred in business, with the result that money 
is wasted by millions, and so are lucky if we are 
not swindled on a gigantic scale by the unscrupulous 
contractors. It is usually in an army's food and 
clothing that scandals of this nature are revealed, 
and it is only just to the War Office to say that in 



22 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

this campaign, for once, food has been good and 
clothing fair. 

Most of our muddling, so far, has been of a nature 
tending to prolong the duration of the war. Our 
persistent policy of unreadiness has simply meant 
that for four, five, or six long months we have not 
been ready to take the field with the forces im- 
peratively necessary if the Germans are to be hurled, 
neck and crop, out of Belgium and France across 
the Rhine, and their country finally occupied and 
subjugated. 

Already another new and graver peril is threaten- 
ing us — the peril of a premature and inconclusive 
peace. Already the voice of the pacifist — that 
strangely constituted being to whom the person of 
the enemy is always sacred — is being heard in the 
land. We heard it in the Boer War from the 
writers and speakers paid by Germany. Already 
the plea is going up that Germany must not be 
" crushed " — that Germany, who has made Belgium 
a howling wilderness, who has massacred men, 
women, and even little children, in sheer cold- 
blooded lust, shall be treated with the mild con- 
sideration we extend to a brave and honourable 
opponent. Sure it is, therefore, that if Britain 
retires from this war with her avowed purpose 
unfulfilled, we shall have been guilty of muddling 
compared with which the worst we have ever done 
in the past will be the merest triviality. 

If this war has proved one thing more clearly 
than another, it has proved that the German is 
utterly and absolutely unfit to exercise power, that 
he is restrained by no moral consideration from 
perpetuating the most shocking abominations in 
pursuit of his aims, that the most sacred obligations 
are as dust in the balance when they conflict with 



THE PERIL OF " MUDDLING THROUGH " 23 

his supposed interests. It has proved too, beyond 
the shadow of a doubt, that England is the real 
object of Germany's foaming hate. We are the 
enemy ! France and Russia are merely incidental 
foes. It is England that stands between Germany 
and the realisation of her insane dream of world 
dominion, and unless Great Britain to-day com- 
pletes, with British thoroughness, the task to which 
she has set her hand, this generation, and the 
generations that are to come, will never be freed 
from the blighting shadow of Teutonic megalomania. 
It is quite conceivable that a peace which would be 
satisfactory to Russia and France would be pro- 
foundly unsatisfactory to us. Happily, the Allies are 
solemnly bound to make peace jointly or not at all, 
and I trust there will be no wavering on this point. 
For us there is but one line of safety : the Germanic 
power for mischief must be finally and irretrievably 
broken before Britain consents to sheathe the sword. 

Against the prosecution of the war to its final and 
crushing end, the bleating pacifists are already 
beginning to raise their puny voices. I am not 
going to give these gentlemen the free advertisement 
that their hearts delight in by mentioning them by 
name : it is not my desire to assist, in the slightest 
degree, their pestilential activity. They form one 
of those insignificant minorities who are inherently 
and essentially unpatriotic. Their own country is 
invariably wrong, and other countries are invariably 
right. To-day they are bleating, in the few un- 
important journals willing to publish their extra- 
ordinary views, that Germany ought to be spared 
the vengeance called for by her shameful neglect 
of all the laws of God and man. 

Is there a reader of these lines who will heed 
them ? Surely not. 



24 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

Burke said it was impossible to draw up an 
indictment against a nation : Germany has given 
him the lie. Our pro-German apologists and paci- 
fists are fond of laying the blame of every German 
atrocity, upon the shoulders of that mysterious 
individual — the " Prussian militarist." I reply— - 
and my words are borne out by official evidence 
published in my recent book " German Atrocities " 
— that the most shameful and brutal deeds of the 
German Army, which, be it remembered, is the 
German people in arms, are cordially approved by 
the mass of that degenerate nation. The appalling 
record of German crime in Belgium, the entire 
policy of " f rightfulness " by land and sea, the 
murder of women and children at Scarborough, 
the sack of Aerschot and of Louvain, the massacre 
of seven hundred men, women, and children in 
Dinant, the piratical exploits of the German sub- 
marines, are all hailed throughout Germany with 
shrieks of hysterical glee. And why ? Because it 
is recognised that, in the long run and in the ultimate 
aim, they are a part and parcel of a policy which 
has for its end the destruction of our own beloved 
Empire. Hatred of Britain — the one foe — has 
been, for years, the mainspring that has driven the 
German machine. The Germans do not hate the 
French, they do not hate the Russians, they do not 
even hate the " beastly Belgians," whose country 
they have laid waste with fire and sword. The 
half-crazed Lissauer shrieks aloud that Germans 
" have but one hate, and one alone — England," and 
the mass of the German people applaud him to the 
echo. 

Very well, let us accept, as we do accept, the 
situation. Are we going to neglect the plainest 
and most obvious warning ever given to a nation, 



THE PERIL OF " MUDDLING THROUGH " 25 

and permit ourselves to muddle into a peace that 
would be no peace, but merely a truce in which 
Germany would bend her every energy to the 
preparation of another bitter war of revenge ? 

Here lies one of the gravest perils by which our 
country is to-day faced, and it is a peril immensely 
exaggerated by the foolish peace-talk in which a 
section of malevolent busybodies are already 
indulging. It is as certain as the rising of to- 
morrow's sun that, when this war is over, Germany 
would, if the power were left within her, embark 
at once on a new campaign of revenge. We have 
seen how, for forty-five long years, the French 
have cherished in their hearts the hope of recovering 
the fair provinces wrested from them in the war 
of 1870-1871. And the French, be it remembered, 
are not a nation capable of nourishing a long-con- 
tinued national hatred. Generous, proud, and 
intensely patriotic they are ; malicious and re- 
vengeful they emphatically are not. As patriotic 
in their own way as the French, the Germans have 
shown themselves capable of a paroxysm of national 
hatred to which history offers no parallel. 

They have realised, with a sure instinct, that 
Britain, and Britain alone, has stood in the way 
of the realisation of their grandiose scheme of 
world-dominion, and it is certain that for long 
years to come, possibly for centuries, they will, if 
we give them the opportunity, plot our downfall 
and overthrow us. Are we to muddle the business 
of making peace as we muddled the preparations 
for war ? If we do we shall, assuredly, deserve 
the worst fate that can be reserved for a nation 
which deliberately shuts its eyes to the logic of 
plain and demonstrable fact. 

Germany can never be adequately punished for 



26 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

the crimes against God and man which she has 
committed in Belgium and France. The ancient 
law of " An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth " 
is the only one under which adequate punishment 
could be meted out, and whatever happens we 
know that the soldiers of the Allies will never be 
guilty of the unspeakable calendar of pillage and 
arson and murder which has made the very name 
of " German " a byword throughout civilisation 
throughout all the ages that are to come. However 
thoroughly she is humbled to the dust, Germany 
will never taste the unspeakable horror that she 
has brought upon the helpless and unoffending 
victims of her fury and lust in Belgium and in 
parts of France. It may be that if they fall into 
our hands we should hang, as they deserve to be 
hanged, the official instigators of atrocities whose 
complicity could be clearly proved — though we, 
to-day, give valets to the Huns at Donington Hall. 
We cannot lay the cities of Germany in ruin, and 
massacre the civilian population on the approved 
German plan. What we can do, and ought to do, 
is to make sure that, at whatever cost of blood and 
treasure to us, Germany is deprived of any further 
capacity to menace the peace of the world. It is 
the plain and obvious duty of the Allies to see that 
the hateful and purely German doctrine that might 
is the only right shall, once and for all, be swept 
from the earth. It is for us to make good the 
noble words of Mr. Asquith — that Britain will 
prosecute the war to the finish. It is for us to see 
that there shall be no " muddling through " when 
the treaty of peace is finally signed in Berlin. 

When the war was forced upon us, the best 
business brains of this country recognised that one 
of the surest and speediest means of securing an 



THE PERIL OF " MUDDLING THROUGH " 27 

efficient guarantee that Germany should not be 
able to injure us in the future would be a strenuous 
effort to capture her enormous foreign trade. 
Modern wars, it must be remembered, are not 
merely a matter of the clash of arms on the stricken 
field. The enormous ramifications of commercial 
undertakings, immeasurably greater to-day than at 
any time in history, mean that, in the conduct of a 
great campaign, economic weapons may be even 
more powerful than the sword of the big battalions. 
This unquestionable fact has been fully realised by 
our leading thinkers. Thoughtless people have 
been heard to say that, if France and Russia wish to 
conclude peace, England must necessarily join with 
them because she cannot carry on the war alone. 
There could be no greater mistake. 

Just so long as the British Fleet holds the com- 
mand of the sea, Germany's foreign trade is in the 
paralysing grip of an incubus which cannot be 
shaken off. In the meantime, all the seas of all 
the world are free to our ships and our commerce, 
and, though the volume of world- trade is necessarily 
diminished by the war, there remains open to 
British manufacturers an enormous field which has 
been tilled hitherto mainly by German firms. 

We may now ask ourselves whether our business 
men are taking full advantage of this priceless 
opportunity offered them for building up and con- 
solidating a commercial position which in the future, 
when the war is ended, will be strong enough to 
defy even the substantial attacks of their German 
competitors. I sincerely wish I could see some 
evidence of it. I wish I could feel that our business 
men of England were looking ahead, studying 
methods and markets, and planning the campaigns 
which, in the days to come, shall reach their full 



28 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

fruition. But alas! they are not. We heard 
many empty words, when war broke out, of 
the war on Germany's trade, but I am very much 
afraid — and my view is shared by many business 
acquaintances — that the early enthusiasm of " what 
we will do " has vanished, and that when the time 
for decisive action comes we shall be found still rely- 
ing upon the traditional* but fatal policy of "mud- 
dling through " which has for so long been typical of 
British business as well as official methods. 

We shall still, I fear, be found clinging to the 
antiquated and worn-out business principles and 
stiff conventionalities which, during the past few 
years, have enabled the German to oust us from 
markets which for centuries we have been in the 
habit of regarding as our own peculiar preserves. 
That, in view of the enormous importance of the 
commercial warfare of to-day, I believe to be a very 
real peril. 

King George's famous " Wake up, England ! " is 
a cry as necessary to-day as ever. I do not believe 
Germany will ever be able to pay adequate indemnity 
for the appalling monetary losses she has brought 
upon us, and if those losses are to be regained it 
can only be by the capture of her overseas markets, 
and the diversion of her overseas profits into British 
pockets. Shall we seize the opportunity or shall 
we " muddle through " ? 

This is not a political book, for I am no politician, 
^and, further, to-day we have no politics — at least 
of the Radical and Conservative type. " Britain for 
the Briton " should be our battle-cry. There is one 
subject, however, which, even though it may 
appear to touch upon politics, cannot be omitted 
from our consideration. If the war has taught us 
many lessons, perhaps the greatest is its splendid 



THE PERIL OF " MUDDLING THROUGH " 2& 

demonstration of the essential solidarity of the 
British Empire. We all know that the German 
writers have preached the doctrine that the British 
Empire was as ramshackle a concern as that of 
Austria-Hungary ; that it must fall to pieces at 
the first shock of war. To-day the British Empire 
stands before the world linked together, literally, 
by a bond of steel. From Canada, from Australia, 
from India, even — despite a jarring note struck by 
German money — from South Africa, " the well- 
forged link rings true." Germany to-day is very 
literally face to face with the British Empire in 
arms, with resources in men and money to which her 
own swaggering Empire are relatively puny, and; 
with, I hope and believe, a stern determination no 
less strong and enduring than her own. The lesson 
assuredly will not be lost upon her : shall we make 
sure that it is not lost upon us ? 

For some years past there has been a steadily 
growing opinion — stronger in the Overseas Do- 
minions, perhaps, than here at home — that the- 
British Empire should, in business affairs, be much 
more of a " family concern " than it is. Either 
at home, or overseas, our Empire produces practic- 
ally everything which the complexity of our modern 
social and industrial system demands. Commerce- 
is the very life-blood of our modern world : is it not 
time we took up in earnest the question of doing, 
our international business upon terms which should, 
place our own people, for the first time, in a position 
of definite advantage over the stranger ? Is it not 
time we undertook the task of welding the Empire 
into a single system linked as closely by business 
ties as by the ties of flesh and blood and sentiment ? 
That, I believe, will be one of the great questions; 
which this war will leave us for solution. 



30 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

In the past, Germany's chief weapon against us 
has been her commercial enterprise and activity. It 
should now be part of our business to prevent her 
harming us in the future, and, in the commercial 
field, the strongest weapon in oar armoury has 
hitherto remained unsheathed. Shall we, in the 
days that are to come, do our imperial trading on a 
great family scale — British goods the most favoured 
in British markets — or shall we here again " muddle 
through " on a policy which gives the stranger and 
the enemy alien at least as friendly a welcome as 
we extend to our own sons? 

Perhaps, in the days that are coming, that in 
itself will be a question upon which the future of the 
British Empire will depend. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PERIL OF EXPLOITING THE POOR 

No phenomenon of the present serious situation is 
more remarkable, or of more urgent and vital 
concern to the nation, than the amazing rise in 
food prices which we have witnessed during the 
past six months. At a time when the British 
Navy dominates the trade routes, when the German 
mercantile flag has been swept from every ocean 
highway in the world, when the German " High 
Seas " fleet lies in shelter of the guns of the Kiel 
Canal fortifications, we have seen food prices 
steadily mounting, until to-day the purchasing 
power of the sovereign has declined to somewhere 
in the neighbourhood of fifteen shillings, as com- 
pared with the period immediately preceding the 
outbreak of hostilities. 

Now this is a fact of the very gravest significance, 
and unless the price of food falls it will inevitably 
be the precursor of very serious events. Matters 
are moving so rapidly, at the time I write, that 
before these lines appear in print they may well be 
confirmed by the logic of events. Ominous mutter- 
ings are already heard, the spectre of labour troubles 
has raised its ugly head, and, unless some modus 
vivendi be found, it seems more than probable that 
we shall witness a very serious extension of the 
strikes which have already begun. 

31 



32 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

The most important of our domestic commodities 
are wheat, flour, meat, sugar, and coal. Inquiries 
made by a Committee of the Cabinet have shown 
that, as compared with the average prices ruling 
in the three years before the war, the price of 
wheat and flour has risen by something like 66 per 
cent. ! Sugar has increased 43 per cent., coal 
about 60 per cent., imported meat about 19 per 
cent., and British meat 12 per cent. The rise in 
prices is falling upon the very poor with a cruelty 
which can only be viewed with horror. Imagine, 
for a moment, the plight of t^e working-class 
family with an income of thirty shillings a week, 
and perhaps five or six mouths to feed. Even in 
normal times their lot is not to be envied : food 
shortage is almost inevitable. Suddenly they find 
that for a sovereign they can purchase only fifteen 
shillings' worth of food. Hunger steps in at once : 
the pinch of famine is felt acutely, and, thanks to 
the appalling price to which coal has been forced, 
it is aggravated by intense suffering from the cold, 
which ill-nurtured bodies are in no condition to 
resist. 

I am not contending that there is any very 
abnormal amount of distress throughout the coun- 
try, taking the working-classes as a whole. Thanks 
to the withdrawal of the huge numbers of men 
now serving in the Army, the labour market, for 
once in a way, finds itself rather under than over- 
stocked, and the ratio of unemployment is un- 
doubtedly lower than it has been for some con- 
siderable time. The better-paid artisans, whose 
wages are decidedly above the average at the 
present moment, are not suffering severely, even 
with the high prices now ruling. But they are 
exasperated, and some of them are making all kinds 



THE PERIL OF EXPLOITING THE POOR 33 

of unpatriotic threats, to which I shall allude 
presently. 

The real sufferers, and there are too many of 
thern, are the families of the labouring classes of 
the lower grades, whose weekly wage is small and 
whose families, as a rule, are correspondingly 
numerous. At the best of times these people seldom 
achieve more than a bare existence : at the present 
moment they are suffering terribly. Yet all the 
consolation they get from the Government is the 
assurance that they ought to be glad they did not 
live in the days of the Crimean War, and the pious 
hope that " within a few weeks " — oh ! beautifully 
elastic term ! — prices will come down — if we, 
by forcing the Dardanelles, liberate the grain 
accumulated in the Black Sea ports. No doubt the 
best possible arrangements have been made towards 
that issue, and we all hope for a victorious end, 
but our immediate business is to investigate the 
distress among the very poor, and to check the 
ominous threats of labour troubles which have been 
freely bandied about and have even been translated 
into action — or inaction — which has had the effect 
of delaying some of the country's preparations for 
carrying on the war. 

The average retail prices paid by the working- 
classes for food in eighty of the principal towns 
on March 9th and a year ago are compared in the 
following table issued by the President of the 
Board of Trade : 



Bread, per 4 lbs. 
Butter, per lb. . 
Jam, per lb. 
Cheese, per lb. . 



ast 


Year 


Now 


s. 


d. 


*. d. 





H 


7f 


1 


31 


i H 





5 


5} 





81 


lOJ 



Last Year 


N 


ow 


s. d. 


s. 




11 


1 





9| 





11 


7J 





8! 


10J 





ni 


6| 





H 


1 6 


1 


n 


2 





H 



34 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 



Bacon (streaky), per lb. 

Beef, English, per lb. 

Beef, chilled or frozen, per lb. 

Mutton, English, per lb. 

Mutton, frozen, per lb. 

Tea, per lb. 

Sugar, granulated, per lb. . 

A few more facts. Though the matter was 
constantly referred to, yet we had been at war for 
five months before the Government could be pre- 
vailed upon to prohibit the exportation of cocoa ; 
with what result ? In December, January, and Feb- 
ruary last our exports of cocoa to neutral countries 
were 16,575,017 lbs., whilst for the corresponding 
period for 1913 the exports were but 3,584,003 lbs. ! 
Before the war, Holland was an exporter of cocoa 
to this country ; since the war she has been the 
principal importer ; and there is a mass of indis- 
putable evidence to show that nearly the whole 
of our exports of cocoa have found their way to 
Germany through this channel. 

The prohibition is now removed, so we may 
expect that the old game of supplying the German 
Army with cocoa from England will begin again ! 

The German Army must also have tea. Let us 
see how we have supplied it. During the first 
fortnight of war, export was restricted and only 
60,666 lbs. were sent out of the country, whereas 
for the corresponding period of the previous year 
179,143 lbs. were exported. During the next three 
months the restrictions were removed, when no less 
a quantity than 15,808,628 lbs. was sent away — 
the greater part of it by roundabout channels 
to Germany — against 1,146,237 lbs. for the corre- 



THE PERIL OF EXPLOITING THE POOR 35 

sponding period in 1913. After three months a 
modified restriction was placed upon the export of 
tea, but after reckoning the whole sum it is found 
that during the time we have been at war we have 
sent abroad over 20,000,000 lbs. of tea, while in the 
corresponding period of the previous year we sent 
only a little over 2,000,000 lbs. ! 

Now where has it gone ? In August and September 
last, Germany received from Holland 16,000,000 lbs. 
whereas in that period of 1913 she only received 
1,000,000 lbs. Tea is given as a stimulant to 
German troops in the field, so we see how the British 
Government have been tricked into actually feeding 
the enemy ! 

And again, let us see how the poor are being 
exploited by the policy of those in high authority. 
At the outbreak of war the market price of tea was 
lid. per lb, As soon as exportation was allowed, 
the price was raised to the buyer at home to 9d. 
Then when exports were restricted, it fell to 8%d. 
But as soon as the restrictions on exports were re- 
moved altogether, the price rose until, to-day, the 
very commonest leaf- tea fetches lOd. a lb. — a price 
never equalled, save in the memories of octogen- 
arians. 

Who is to blame for this fattening of our enemies 
at the expense of the poor ? Let the reader put this 
question seriously to himself. 

Generally speaking, of course, prices of all articles 
are regulated by the ordinary laws of supply and 
demand ; if the supply falls or the demand increases, 
prices go up. But there is another factor which 
sometimes comes into play which is very much in 
evidence at the present moment — the existence of 
" rings " of unscrupulous financiers who, with 
ample resources in cash and organisation, see in every 



36 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

national crisis a heaven-sent opportunity of in- 
creasing their gains at the expense of the suffering 
millions of the poor. It is quite evident, to my 
mind, that something of the kind is going on to-day, 
as it has gone on in every great war in history. 
The magnates of Mark Lane and the bulls of the 
Chicago wheat pit care nothing for the miseries of 
the unknown and unheeded millions whose daily 
bread may be shortened by their financial jugglings. 
They are out to make money. It may be true, as 
Mr. Asquith said, that we cannot control the price 
of wheat in America. But, at least, it cannot be 
said that the price of bread to-day is due to shortage 
of supply. During the last six months of 1914, as 
compared with the last six months of 1913, there 
was actually a rise of 112,250 tons in the quantities 
of wheat, flour, and other grain equivalent imported 
into this country. Where, then, can be the shortage, 
and what explanation is there of the prevailing high 
prices except the fact that large quantities of food 
are being deliberately held ofi the market in order 
that the price may be artificially enhanced? This 
is not the work of the small men, but of the big 
firms who can buy largely enough, probably 
in combination, to control and dominate the 
market. 

When the subject was recently debated in the 
House of Commons the voice of the Labour member 
was heard unmistakably. Mr. Toothill said bluntly 
that if it was impossible for the Government to 
prevent the prices of food being " forced up " unduly, 
then it remained for Labour members to request 
employers to meet the situation by an adequate 
advance in wages. That request has since been 
made in unmistakable terms. Mr. Clynes was even 
more emphatic. " Though the Labour party were 



THE PERIL OF EXPLOITING THE POOR 37 

as anxious as any to keep trade going in the country," 
he said, " it was clear to them that the truce in 
industry could not be continued unless some effective 
relief were given in regard to the prices under dis- 
cussion." In other words, the Labour " organisers " 
will call for strikes — perhaps hold up a large part of 
our war preparations — unless the employers, most 
of whom are making no increased profit out of the 
price of food, are prepared to shoulder the entire 
burden. 

It is quite clear, to my mind, that the prices of 
food are being forced up by gigantic unpatriotic 
combines, either in this country or abroad, or both. 
I do not think that mere shortage of supply is 
sufficient to account for the extraordinary advances 
that have taken place. Whether the Government 
can take steps to defeat the wheat rings, as they did 
to prevent the cornering of sugar, is a question with 
which I am not concerned here. My purpose is 
merely to point out that the constant rise in food 
prices, brought about by gangs of unscrupulous 
speculators, is bringing about a condition of 
affairs fraught with grave peril to our beloved 
country. 

If we turn to coal we find the scandal ten times 
greater than in the case of flour and meat. It is 
at least possible that agencies outside our own 
country may be playing a great part in forcing up 
the prices of food ; they can have no effect upon 
the price of coal, which we produce ourselves and 
of which we do not import an ounce. Coal to-day 
is simply at famine prices. It is impossible to buy 
the best house coal for less than 38s. per ton, while 
the cheapest is being sold at 34s. per ton, and the 
very poor, who buy from the street-trolleys only 
inferior coal and in small quantities, are being fleeced 



38 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

to the extent of Is. lid. or 25. per cwt. This is an 
exceedingly serious matter, and it is not to be ex- 
plained, even under present conditions, by the ordin- 
ary laws of supply and demand. Why should coal 
in a village on the banks of the Thames be actually 
cheaper than the corresponding quality of coal when 
sold in London ? 

There can be only one answer — the London supply 
is in the hands of the coal " ring " which has com- 
pelled all the London coal merchants to come into 
line. So extensive and powerful is the organisation 
of this ring, that the small men, unless they followed 
the lead of the big dealers, would be immediately 
faced with ruin : they would not only find it difficult 
to obtain coal at all, but would promptly be undersold 
— as the Standard Oil Company undersold thousands 
of small competitors — until they were compelled to 
put up their shutters. 

The big coal men, the men who make the profit — 
and with their ill-gotten gains will purchase Birth- 
day honours later on — of course blame the war for 
everything. The railways, they say, cannot handle 
the coal ; so much labour has been withdrawn for 
the Army that production has fallen below the 
demand. But I am assured, on good authority, 
that coal bought before the war, and delivered to 
London depots at 16s. or 17s. per ton, is being 
retailed to-day at between 36s. and 40s. per ton. 
The big dealers know that, cost what it may, the 
public must have coal, and they are taking advan- 
tage of every plausible excuse the war offers them 
to wring from the public the very highest prices 
possible. " The right to exploit," in fact, is being 
pushed to its logical extreme in the face of the 
country's distress, and the worst sufferers, as usual, 
are the very poor, who for their pitiful half-hundred- 



THE PERIL OF EXPLOITING THE POOR 39 

weights of inferior rubbish pay at a rate which 
would be ample for the finest coal that could grace 
the grate of a West-End drawing-room. 

Can we shut our eyes to the fact that in this 
shameful exploiting of the very poor by the un- 
patriotic lie all the elements of a very serious 
danger ? Let us not forget the noble services the 
working-classes of Britain are rendering to our 
beloved country. They have given the best and 
dearest of their manhood in the cause of the Empire, 
and it is indeed a pitiful confession of weakness, 
and an ironic commentary on the grandiose schemes 
of " social reform " with which they have been 
tempted of late years, if the Government cannot 
or will not protect them from the human leeches — 
the Birthday knights in the making — who suck their 
ill-gotten gains from those least able to protect 
themselves. 

The Government have promised an inquiry which 
may, if unusual expedition is shown, make a 
" demonstration " with the coal-dealers just about 
the time the warm weather arrives. Prices will 
then tumble, the Government will solemnly pat 
itself upon the back for its successful interference, 
and the coal merchants, having made small or large 
fortunes as the case may be during the winter, 
will make a great virtue of reducing their demands 
to oblige the Government. In the meantime, the 
poor are being fleeced in the interests of an un- 
scrupulous combine. Is there no peril here to our 
beloved country ? Are we not justified in saying 
that the machinations of these gangs of unscrupulous 
capitalists are rapidly tending to produce a con- 
dition of affairs which may, at any moment, expose 
us to a social upheaval which would contain all 
the germs of an unparalleled disaster % 



40 



BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 



Let the condition of affairs in certain sections 
of the labour world speak in answer. I have 
already quoted the thinly-veiled threat of Mr. 
Clynes. Others have gone beyond threats and 
have begun a war against their country on their 
own account. There is an unmistakable tendency, 
fostered as usual by agitators of the basest class, 
towards action which is, in effect, helping the 
Germans against our brave soldiers and sailors who 
are enduring hardships of war such as have not 
been equalled since the days of the Crimea. 



HOW WE SUPPLY THE GERMAN ARMY WITH 
FOOD 

Exports of Cocoa to Neutral countries 
(fob the German Market) 

Dec. 1, 1913, to Mar. 1, 1914 I Dec. 1, 1914, to Mar. 1, 1915 
3,584,003 lbs. I 16,575,017 lbs. 

Exports or Tea to Neutral Countries 
(for the German Market) 

Dec. 1,1913, to Mar. 1,1914 I Dec. 1, 1914, to Mar. 1, 1915 
1,146,237 lbs. 15,808,628 lbs. 



As I wrote these lines, strikes on a large scale 
had begun on the Clyde and on the Tyne, two of 
our most important shipbuilding centres, where 
great contracts — essential to the success of our 
arms — are being carried on, and in the London 
Docks, where most of the food of London's teeming 
millions is handled. London dockers, to the 
number of some 25,000, are agitating for a rise in 
wages ; between 5,000 and 6,000 of them have 
struck work at the Victoria and Albert Dock on 
the question, forsooth, whether they shall be 
engaged inside the docks, or outside. In other 



THE PERIL OF EXPLOITING THE POOR 41 

words, the expeditious handling of London's sorely 
needed food is being jeopardised by a ridiculous 
squabble which one would think half a dozen 
capable business men could settle in five minutes. 
But here, as usual, the poorest are the victims of 
their own class. 

In spite of the well-meaning but idiotic young 
women who have gone about distributing white 
feathers to men who, in their opinion, ought to 
have joined the Army, common-sense people will 
recognise that the skilled workers in many trades 
are just as truly fighting the battles of their country 
as if they were serving with the troops in Belgium 
or France. If every able-bodied man joined the 
Army to-day the nation would collapse for want 
of supplies to feed the fighting lines. It is not my 
purpose here to discuss whether the men or the 
masters are right in the disputes in the engineering 
trades. Probably the authorities have not done 
enough to bring home to the men the knowledge 
that, in executing Government work, they are in 
fact helping to fight the country's battles. None 
the less the men who strike at the present moment 
delay work which is absolutely essential to the 
safety of our country. We know from Lord 
Kitchener's own lips that they have done so. 

Our war organisation to-day may be divided 
into three parts — the Navy fighting on the sea, the 
Army fighting on land, and the industrial army 
providing supplies for the other two. It must be 
brought home to the last named, by every device 
in our power, that their duties are just as important 
to our success as the work of their brothers on the 
storm-swept North Sea. or in the mud and slush 
and peril of the trenches in Flanders. This war is 
very largely a war of supplies, and our fighting 

2* 



42 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

must be done not only in the far-flung battle lines, 
but in the factory and workshop, whose outputs 
are essential to the far deadlier work which we ask 
of the men who are heroically facing the shells and 
bullets of the common enemy. 

Now there is no disguising the fact that the 
industrial army at home contains far too large a 
percentage of " slackers." 

That is the universal testimony of men who know. 
There are thousands of workmen who will not keep 
full time, for the simple reason that they are making 
more money than they really need and are so lazy 
and unpatriotic that they will not make the extra 
effort which the necessities of the situation so 
urgently demand. What we need to-day is, above 
all things, determined hard work : we do not want 
to see our fighting forces starved for want of material 
caused by the shirking of the " slackers " or by 
unpatriotic disputes and squabbles. To-day we 
are fighting for our lives. The privates of the 
industrial army ought to realise that "slacking" 
or striking is just as much a criminal offence as 
desertion in the face of the enemy would be in the 
case of a soldier. It is true, as a recent writer has 
said, that " those who fight industrially, working 
long hours in a spirit of high patriotism, may not 
seem very heroic," but it is none the less the fact 
that they are fighting : they are doing the work that 
is essential to our national safety and welfare. Do 
they — at least do some of them — realise this ? The 
following extract from Engineering, the well-known 
technical journal, shows very clearly that among 
certain classes of highly paid workers there is a 
total disregard of our national necessity which is 
positively appalling. As the result of a series of 
inquiries Engineering says : 



THE PERIL OF EXPLOITING THE POOR 43 

" Every reply received indicates that there is slack- 
ness in many trades. Be it remembered that high 
wages can be earned ; for relatively unskilled 
although somewhat arduous work, 30<s. a day can be 
earned. 

" Time-and-a-quarter to time-and-a-half is paid for 
Saturday afternoon work, and double time for Sunday 
work. Men could earn from £7 to £10 per week — 
and pay no income-tax. 

" Men will work on Saturday and Sunday, when 
they get handsomely paid, but will absent themselves 
on other days or parts of days. 

" The head of a firm, who has shown a splendid 
example in his work, and is most kindly disposed to 
all workers, states in his reply to us : ' Our trouble is 
principally with the ironworkers, especially riveters, 
who appear to have a definite standard of living, and 
who regulate their wages accordingly ; they seem to 
aim at making £3 per week : if they can make this 
in four days, good and well ; but if they can make it 
in three days, better still. . . . The average working- 
man of to-day does not wish to earn more money, 
and put by something for a ' rainy day/ but is quite 
content to live from hand to mouth, so long as he 
has as easy a time as possible." 

What words are strong enough to condemn the 
action of such men who, safe in their homes from 
the perils of the serving soldier, and infinitely better 
paid than the man who daily risks his life in the 
trenches, are ready deliberately to jeopardise the 
safety of our Empire by taking advantage of the 
gravest crisis in our history to levy what is nothing 
less than industrial blackmail ? It cannot be pre- 
tended that these men are under-paid : they can 
earn far more than many members of the profes- 
sional classes. Just as truly as the coal and wheat 
" rings " are exploiting the miseries of the very 



44 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

poor, so these aristocrats of the labour world are 
playing with the lives of their fellows and the 
destinies of our Empire. They are helping the 
enemy just as surely as the German who is fighting 
in his country's ranks. They are, in short, taking 
advantage of a national danger to demand rates 
of pay which, in times of safety and peace, they 
could not possibly secure. 

For years past we have been striving to arrive 
at some means of settling these unhappy labour 
disputes which have probably done more harm to 
British trade than all the German competition of 
which we have heard so much. In every district 
machinery has been set up for conciliation and settle- 
ment where a settlement is sincerely desired by 
both parties to a dispute. And if this machinery is 
not set in motion at the present moment, it is because 
one party or the other is so blind and self-willed 
that it would rather jeopardise the Empire than 
abate a jot of its demands. Could anything be 
more heart-breaking to the men who are fighting 
and dying in the trenches i 

Whatever may be the merits of any dispute, 
there must be no stoppage of War Office or Admiralty 
work at the present moment, and if any body of 
men refuse at this juncture to submit their dispute 
to the properly organised conciliation boards, 
and to abide by the result, they are traitors in the 
fullest sense of the world. How serious the crisis 
is, and how grave a peril it constitutes to our 
country, may be judged from the fact that the 
Government found it necessary to appoint a special 
Committee to inquire into the production in engineer- 
ing and shipbuilding establishments engaged in 
Government work. The Committee's view of the 
case, which I venture to think will be endorsed by 



THE PERIL OF EXPLOITING THE POOR 45 

every thinking man, may be judged by the following 
extract from their report: 

" We are strongly of opinion that, during the 
present crisis, employers and workmen should under 
no circumstances allow their differences to result in a 
stoppage of work. 

" Whatever may be the rights of the parties at 
normal times, and whatever may be the methods con- 
sidered necessary for the maintenance and enforce- 
ment of these rights, we think there can be no justi- 
fication whatever for a resort to strikes or lockouts 
under present conditions, when the resulting cessation 
of work would prevent the production of ships, guns, 
equipment, stores, or other commodities required by 
the Government for the purposes of the war." 

The Committee went on to recommend that in 
cases where the parties could not agree, the dispute 
should be referred to an impartial tribunal, and the 
Government accordingly appointed a special Com- 
mittee to deal with any matters that might be 
brought before it. 

I do not think it is possible to exaggerate the 
seriousness of the danger with which we must be 
threatened if these unhappy disputes are not brought 
to a close, and I know of no incident since the war 
began that has shown us up in so unfavourable a 
light as compared with our enemy. Whatever we 
may think of Germany's infamous methods ; what- 
ever views we may hold of her monstrous mistakes ; 
whatever our opinion may be as to the final outcome 
of the war, we must, at least, grant to the Germans 
the virtue of patriotism. The German Socialists 
are, it is notorious, as strongly opposed to war as 
any people on earth. But they have, since the great 
struggle began, shown themselves willing to sink 
their personal views when the safety of the Father- 



46 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

land is threatened in what, to them, is a war of 
aggression, deliberately undertaken by their enemies. 
We have heard, since the war began, a great deal of 
wild and foolish talk about economic distress in 
Germany. We have been told, simply because the 
German Government has wisely taken timely pre- 
cautions to prevent a possible shortage of food, that 
the German nation is on the verge of starvation. 
But would Germany, who for seven years prepared 
for war, overlook the vital question of her food 
supply ? Probably it is true that the industrial 
depression in Germany, thanks to the destruction 
by our Navy of her overseas trade, is very much 
worse than it is in England. But no one has yet 
suggested that the Krupp workmen are threatening 
to come out on strike and paralyse the defensive 
forces if their demands for higher wages are not 
instantly conceded. It is more than probable that 
any one who suggested such a course, even if he 
escaped the heavy hand of the Government, would 
be speedily suppressed in very rough-and-ready 
fashion by his own comrades. The Germans, at 
least, will tolerate no treachery in their midst, and 
unless the leaders among the English trade unionists 
can bring their men to a realisation of the wicked- 
ness involved in strikes at the present moment, they 
will assuredly forfeit every vestige of public respect 
and confidence. 

I am not holding a brief either for the masters 
or the men. Let ample inquiry be made, by all 
means, into the subject of the dispute. If the 
masters raise any objection to either the sitting or 
the finding of the Government Commission, they 
deserve all the blame that naturally attaches to the 
strikers. The inquiry should be loyally accepted 
by both sides, and its findings as loyally respected. 



THE PERIL OF EXPLOITING THE POOR 47 

Prima facie, men who can earn the wages mentioned 
in the extract from Engineering which I have already 
quoted are well off — far better off than their com- 
rades who are doing trench duty in France, and are 
free from the hourly risk to which the righting forces 
are exposed. There may be, however, good and 
valid reasons why they should be paid even better. 
If there are, the Government inquiry should find 
them out. But to stop work now, to hold up the 
production of the ships, guns, and materials neces- 
sary to carry on the war, is criminal, wicked, and 
unpatriotic in the highest degree. It is setting an 
evil example only too likely to be followed, and, if 
it is persisted in, may well be the first step of our 
beloved nation on the downward road which leads 
to utter destruction. 

Mr. Archibald Hurd, a writer always well informed, 
has summed up the situation in the Daily 
Telegraph in the following words, which are worth 
quotation : 

" The recruiting movement has shown that the 
great industrial classes are not, as a whole, unconscious 
of the stake for which we are fighting — the institu- 
tions which we cherish and our freedom. Probably 
if the workers at home were reminded of the impor- 
tance of their labours, they would speedily fall into 
line — if not, well, the resources of civilisation are not 
exhausted, and the Government should be able to 
ensure that not an unnecessary day, or even hour, 
shall be lost in pressing forward the work of equipping 
the new Fleet and the new Army which is essential 
to our salvation. The Government is exercising 
authority under martial law over Army and Navy ; 
cannot it get efficient control over the industrial 



army ? 



In France and Germany these powers exist, and 



48 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

are employed. We are not less committed to the 
great struggle than France and Germany/' 

Those are wise and weighty words, and it may 
be that they point the way to a solution of what 
may become a very grave problem. 






CHAPTER III 

THE PERIL OF NOT DOING ENOUGH 

The vast issues raised by the war make it a matter 
of most imperative necessity that Great Britain and 
her Allies shall put forward, at the earliest possible 
moment, the greatest and supremest efforts of which 
they are capable, in order that the military power 
of the Austro-German alliance should be definitely 
and completely crushed for ever. 

It must never be forgotten that the prize for 
which Germany is fighting is the mastership of 
Europe, the humbling of the power of Great Britain, 
and the imposition of a definitely Teutonic " Kul- 
tur" over the whole of Western civilisation. That 
the free and liberty-loving British peoples should 
ever come under the heel of the Prussian Junker 
spirit involves such a monstrous suppression of 
national thought and feeling as to be almost un- 
believable. Yet, assuredly, that would be our fate 
and the fate of every nationality in Europe should 
Germany emerge victorious from this Titanic 
struggle she has so rashly and presumptuously 
provoked. 

With our very existence as the ruling race at stake 
it is clear that our own dear country cannot afiord 
to be sparing in her efl orts. Whatever the cost ; 
whatever the slaughter ; whatever the action of our 
Allies may be in the future, when the terrific out- 

49 



50 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

pouring of wealth will have bled Europe white, we, 
at least, cannot afford to falter. For our own land, 
the struggle is really, and in very truth, a struggle 
of life and death. 

If we endure and win, civilisation, as we under- 
stand it to-day, will be safe ; if we lose, then Western 
civilisation and the British Empire will go down 
together in the greatest cataclysm in human history. 
Now are we doing everything in our power to avert 
the threatening peril ? Moreover — and this is of 
greatest importance — are our Allies persuaded 
that we are really making the great efforts the occasion 
demands ? This gives us to pause. 

Let us admit we are not, and we have never 
pretended to be, a military nation in the sense 
that France, Russia, and Germany have been 
military nations. We have been seamen for a 
thousand years, and the frontiers of England are 
the salt waves which girdle our coasts. Seeking 
no territory on the Continent of Europe, and un- 
concerned in European disputes unless they directly 
— as in the present instance — threaten our national 
existence, our armed forces have ever been regarded 
as purely defensive, yet not aggressive. For our 
defence we have relied on our naval power; per- 
haps in days gone by we have assumed, rather too 
rashly, that we should never be called upon to take 
part in land-fighting on a continental scale. 

Even after the present war had broken out, it 
was possible for the Parliamentary correspondent 
of a London Liberal paper to write that certain 
Liberal Members of the House of Commons were 
protesting against the sending of British troops 
to the Continent on the ground that they were 
too few in number to exercise any influence in a 
European war ! Perish that thought for ever ! I 



THE PERIL OF NOT DOING ENOUGH 51 

mention this amazing contention merely to show 
how imperfectly the issues raised by the present 
conflict were appreciated in the early days of the 
struggle. To-day we see the establishment of the 
British Army raised by Parliamentary sanction to 
3,000,000 men without a single protest being 
uttered against a figure which, had it been even 
hinted at, a year ago would have been received 
with yells of derision. Yet, in spite of that vast 
number, I still ask " Are we doing enough I " In 
other words, looking calmly at the stupendous 
gravity of the issues involved, is there any further 
effort we could possibly make to shorten the dura- 
tion of the war ? 

For eight months German agents, armed with 
German gold, have been industriously propagating, 
in France and in Russia, the theory that those 
countries were, in fact, pulling the chestnuts out 
of the fire for England. German agents are every- 
where. We were represented as holding the com- 
fortable view that our fleet was doing all that we 
could reasonably be called upon to undertake ; 
that, secure behind our sea barriers, we were simply 
carrying on a policy of " business as usual " with 
the minimum of effort and loss and the maximum 
of gain through our principal competitors in the 
world's commerce being temporarily disabled. The 
object of this manoeuvre was plain. Germany 
hoped to sow the seeds of jealousy and discord, 
and to thrust a wedge into the solid alliance against 
her. Now it is, to-day, beyond all question that, 
to some extent at least, this manoeuvre was success- 
ful. A certain proportion of people in both France 
and Russia, perhaps, grew restive. In the best- 
informed circles it was, of course, fully recognised 
that Britain, with her small standing Army, could 



52 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

not, by any possibility, instantly fling huge forces 
into the field. The less well informed, influenced 
by the German propaganda, began to think we 
were too slow. This feeling began to gather 
strength, and it was not until M. Millerand, the 
French Minister for War, whom I have known for 
years, had actually visited England and seen the 
preparations that were in progress, that French 
opinion, fully informed by a series of capable 
articles in the French Press, settled down to the 
conviction that England was really in earnest. 
Unquestionably, M. Millerand rendered a most 
valuable service to the cause of the Allies by his 
outspoken declarations, and he was fully supported 
by the responsible leaders of French thought and 
opinion. The cleverly laid German plot failed, 
and our Allies to-day realise that we have un- 
sheathed our sword in the deadliest earnest. 

In spite of this, however, the thoughtful section 
of the public have been asking themselves whether, 
in fact, our military action is not slower than it 
should have been. Germany, we must remember, 
started this war with all the tremendous advantage 
secured by years of steady and patient preparation 
for a contest she was fully resolved to precipitate 
as soon as she judged the moment opportune. She 
lost the first trick in the game, thanks to the splendid 
heroism of Belgium, the unexpected rapidity of 
the French and Russian mobilisation, and lastly, 
the wholly surprising power with which Britain 
intervened in the fray — the pebble in the cog- 
wheels of the German machinery. 

The end of the first stage, represented, roughly, by 
the driving of the Germans from the Marne to the 
Aisne, temporarily exhausted all the combatants, 
and there followed a long period of comparative 



THE PERIL OF NOT DOING ENOUGH 53 

inaction, during which all the parties to the quarrel, 
like boxers in distress, sparred to gain their " second 
wind." Now just as Germany was better prepared 
when the first round opened, so she was, necessarily, 
more advanced in her preparations for the second 
stage. Thanks to her scheme of training, there 
was a very real risk that her vast masses of new 
levies would be ready before our own — and this 
has actually proved to be the case. 

New troops are to-day being poured on to both 
the eastern and western fronts at a very rapid 
pace, probably more rapidly than our own. We 
know that it was, in great part, their new levies 
that inflicted the very severe reverse upon the 
Russians in East Prussia and undid, in a single 
fortnight, months of steady and patient work by 
our Allies. It is also probably true that Germany's 
immense superiority in fully trained fighting men 
is steadily decreasing, owing partly to the enormous 
losses she has sustained through her adherence 
to methods of attack which are hopeless in the 
teeth of modern weapons. But she is still very 
much ahead of what any one could have expected 
after seven months of strenuous war, and we must 
ask ourselves very seriously whether, by some 
tremendous national effort, it is not possible to 
expedite the raising of our forces to the very maxi- 
mum of which the nation and the Empire are 
capable. It is not a question of cost : the cost 
would be as nothing as compared with the havoc 
wrought by the prolongation of the war. If there 
is anything more that we can do, we ought, emphatic- 
ally, to do it. It is our business to see that at no 
single point in the conduct of the war are we out- 
stripped by any effort the Germans can make. 

Now it is a tolerably open secret that we are not 



54 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PEEIL 

to-day getting the men we shall want before we can 
bring the war to a conclusion. Why ? When our 
men read of the utter disregard of the spy question, 
of the glaring untruths told by Ministers in the 
House of Commons, of how we are providing German 
barons with valets on prison ships — comfortable 
liners, by the way — of the letting loose of German 
prisoners from internment camps, and how German 
officers have actually been allowed, recently, to 
depart from Tilbury to Holland to fight against us, 
is it any wonder that they hesitate to come forward 
to do their share ? Let the reader ask himself. Are 
all Departments of the Government patriotic ? Is 
it not a fact that the public are daily being misled 
and bamboozled ? Let the reader examine the 
evidence and then think. 

Now, though no figures as to the progress of 
recruiting have been published for some months, it 
is practically certain that we are still very far from 
the three million men we still assuredly require as a 
minimum before victory, definite and unmistakable, 
crowns our effort. I have not the slightest doubt 
that before this struggle ends we shall see practically 
the entire male population of the country called 
to the colours in some capacity, and unfortunately 
that is an aspect of the case which is certainly not 
yet recognised by the democracy as a whole. We 
have done much, it is true. We have surprised our 
friends and our enemies alike — perhaps we have 
even surprised ourselves — by what has been achieved, 
but on the technical side of the war, under the tre- 
mendous driving energy of Lord Kitchener, amazing 
progress has been made in the provision of equip- 
ment, and the latest information I have been able 
to obtain suggests that before long the early shortage 
of guns, rifles, uniforms, and other war material 



THE PERIL OF NOT DOING ENOUGH 55 

will have been entirely overcome, and that we shall 
be experiencing a shortage, not of supplies — but 
alas ! of men. 

That day cannot be far off, and when it dawns the 
problem of raising men will assume an urgency of 
which hitherto we have had no experience. Up 
to now we have been content to tolerate the some- 
what leisurely drift of the young men to the colours 
for the simple reason that we had not the facilities 
for training and equipping them. We cannot, and 
we must not, tolerate any slackness in the future. 
The wastage of modern war is appallingly beyond 
the average conception, and when our big new 
armies take the field, that wastage will rise to 
stupendous figures. It must be made good without 
the slightest delay by constant drafts of new, fully 
trained men, and when that demand rises, as it 
inevitably will, to a pitch of which we have hitherto 
had no experience, it will have to be met. Can 
it be met by the leisurely methods with which we 
have hitherto been content ? 

I do not think so for a moment, and I am con- 
vinced that our responsible Ministers should at once 
take the country fully into their confidence and 
tell us plainly and unmistakably what the man-in- 
the-street has to expect. I have so profound an 
admiration for the men who have voluntarily come 
forward in the hour of their country's need that I 
hope, with all my heart, their example will be 
followed — and followed quickly — to the full extent 
of our nation's needs. But I confess I am not 
sanguine. The recent strikes in the engineering 
trade on the Clyde have gone far to convince me 
that, even now T , a very large proportion of our 
industrial classes do not even to-day realise the real 
seriousness of the position, for it is incredible that 



56 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

Britons who understood that we are actually en- 
gaged in a struggle for our very existence should 
seriously jeopardise and delay, through a miser- 
able industrial squabble, the supply of war material 
upon which the safety of our Empire might depend. 
The strike on the Clyde was, to me, the most evil 
symptom of apathy and lack of all patriotic instincts 
which the war has brought forth ; it was, to my 
mind, proof conclusive that a section at least of 
our working-classes are entirely dead to the great 
national impulse by which, in the past, the British 
people have been so profoundly swayed. Is the 
Government doing enough to rekindle those im- 
pulses ? Has it taken the people fully and frankly 
into its confidence ? Above all, has it made it 
sufficiently clear to the masses that we are not 
getting the men we need, and that unless those men 
come forward voluntarily, some method of com- 
pulsory selection will become inevitable ? 

No, it has not ! 

We come back to the question in which, I am 
firmly convinced, lies the solution of many of our 
present difficulties — are we being told the truth about 
the war ? Has the nation had the clear, ringing call 
to action that, unquestionably, it needs ? 

No, it has not ! 

I shall try to show, in the pages of this 
modest work, that the country has not been given 
the information to which it is plainly entitled re- 
specting the actual military operations which have 
been accomplished. It is certainly not too much 
to say that the country has not been really definitely 
and clearly informed as to the measure of the effort 
it will be called upon to make in the future. I am 
not in the secrets of the War Office, and it is im- 
possible to say what the policy of the Government 



THE PERIL OF NOT DOING ENOUGH 57 

will be, or what trump cards they hold, ready to 
play them when the real crisis comes. But there 
certainly is an urgent and growing need for very plain 
speaking. I speak plainly and without fear. We 
should like to be assured that the recruiting problem, 
upon the solution of which our final success must 
depend, is being dealt with on broad, wise, and 
statesmanlike lines, and that the Government will 
shrink from no measure which shall ensure our 
absolute military efficiency. I have no doubt that 
Lord Kitchener has a very accurate estimate of the 
total number of men he proposes to put into the 
field before the great forward movement begins, of 
the probable total wastage, and of the period for 
which, on the present basis of recruiting, that 
wastage can be made good. 

The country would welcome some very definite 
and explicit statement, either from Mr. Asquith or 
Lord Kitchener, as to the real position, and as to 
whether the Government has absolute confidence 
that the requirements of the military authorities 
can be met under the existing condition of affairs. 
The time is, indeed, more than ripe for some grave 
and solemn warning to the people if, as I believe, the 
effort we have made up to now, great though it has 
undoubtedly been, has not been sufficient. We 
to-day need an authoritative declaration on the 
subject. There is far too strong a tendency, 
fostered by the undue reticence of the irresponsible 
Press Bureau and the screeching " victories " of the 
newspapers, to believe that things are going as well 
and smoothly as we could wish ; and though I would 
strenuously deprecate an attitude of blank pessim- 
ism, the perils which hedge around a fatuous 
optimism are very great. 

My firm conviction, and I think my readers will 



58 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

share in it, is that the great mass of public opinion 
is daily growing more and more apathetic towards 
the war, and truly that is not the mental attitude 
which will bring us with safety and credit through 
the tremendous ordeal which lies before us. The 
Government is not doing enough to drive home the 
fact that greater and still greater efforts will be 
required before the spectre of Prussian domination 
is finally laid to rest : the country at large, befogged 
by the newspapers, and sullenly angry at being 
kept in the dark to an extent hitherto unheard of, 
is in no mood to make the supreme sacrifices upon 
which final victory must depend. We are, as a 
result, not exercising our full strength : we are not 
doing enough, and our full strength will not be 
exerted until the Government takes the public into 
its confidence and tells them exactly what it requires 
and what it intends to have. That it would gain, 
rather than lose, by doing so, I have not the slightest 
doubt, while the gain to the world through the 
throwing into the scale of the solid weight of a fully 
aroused Britain would be simply incalculable. 

While writing this, came the extraordinarily be- 
lated news of the decision of the Government to 
declare a strict blockade of the German coasts. It 
has been a matter of supreme bewilderment to every 
student of the war why this decision was not taken 
long before. Why should we have failed for so long 
to use the very strongest weapon which our indis- 
puted control of the sea has placed in our hands, 
is one of those things which " no fellah can under- 
stand." We have been foolish enough to allow 
food, cotton, and certain other articles of " con- 
ditional contraband " free access to Germany, and 
it is beyond question that in so doing we have 
enormously prolonged the war. And all this, be it 



THE PERIL OF NOT DOING ENOUGH 59 

remembered, at a time when Germany was violating 
every laiv of God and man ! Assume a reversal of 
the prevailing conditions : would Germany have 
been so foolishly indulgent towards us ? Would she 
have treated us with more consideration than she 
showed towards the starving population of Paris in 
1871 ? The very fact of our long inaction in this 
respect adds enormously to the strong suspicion that 
in other directions we are not doing as much as we 
should. Lord Fisher is credited with the saying, 
" The essence of war is violence : moderation in war 
is imbecility. Hit first, hit hard, hit everywhere." 

I think it is safe to say that in more than one 
direction we have displayed an imbecility of mod- 
eration which has tended to encourage the Germans 
in the supreme folly of imagining that they are at 
liberty to play fast and loose with the opinion of 
the civilised world. Our treatment of German spies 
and enemy aliens in our midst is a classic example 
of our contemptuous tolerance of easily removable 
perils, just as much as is our incredible folly in 
neglecting to make the fullest use of our magnificent 
naval resources. Thanks to our tolerance, the Ger- 
mans have been freely importing food and cotton, 
with probably an enormous quantity of copper 
smuggled through in the same ships. We have paid 
in the blood and lives of our gallant soldiers, hus- 
bands, brothers, lovers, while the Germans have 
laughed at us — and not without justice — as a nation 
of silly dolts and imbeciles. Yet we have tardily 
decided upon " retaliatory measures " which we were 
perfectly entitled to take the instant war was de- 
clared, only under the pressure of Germany's cam- 
paign of murder and piracy at sea ! Are we doing 
enough in other directions ? 

Equally belated, and equally calculated to give 



60 BKITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

the impression that we have been too slow in using 
our strength, is the attack upon the Dardanelles. 
It has long been a mystery why, in view of the 
tremendous results involved in such a blow at Ger- 
many's deluded ally, this attack was not made 
earlier. We do not know, and the Government do 
not enlighten us. But the delay has helped to send 
the price of bread to famine prices through blocking 
up the Russian wheat in the Black Sea ports ; it has 
given the Turks and the Germans time to enormously 
strengthen the defences, and has prevented us from 
sending to our Russian friends that support in 
munitions of war of which they undoubtedly stood 
in need. There may, of course, have been good 
reasons for the delay, but if they exist, they have 
baffled the investigation of the most competent 
military and naval critics. It must never be for- 
gotten that the reopening of the Dardanelles and 
the fall of Constantinople must exercise a far more 
potent influence on the progress of the war than, 
say, the relief of Antwerp — another example of sin- 
gularly belated effort ! It must, in fact, transform 
the whole position of the war and react with fatal 
effect through Turkey upon her Allies. Yet the 
war had been in progress for seven months before 
a serious attempt was made at what, directly Turkey 
joined in the war, must have been one of the primary 
objects of the Allies. What added price, I wonder, 
shall we be compelled to pay for that inexplicable 
delay, not merely in the increased cost of the neces- 
saries of life at home and the expenses of the war 
abroad, but in the lives of our fighting men ? For 
it must not be forgotten that a decisive blow at 
Turkey would do much to shorten the duration of 
the war. It would be a serious blow at Germany, 
and would be more than likely to precipitate the 



THE PERIL OF NOT DOING ENOUGH 61 

entrance into the struggle, on the side of the Allies, 
of Italy and the wavering Balkan States. In hard 
cash, the war is costing us nearly a million and a 
half a day. We have to pay it, sooner or later. 
The loss of life is more serious than the loss of 
wealth, and there is no doubt that both must be cur- 
tailed by any successful operation against the Turks. 

The Army has, beyond question, lost thou- 
sands of recruits of the very best class owing to 
the parsimony displayed in the matter of making 
provision for the dependents of men who join the 
fighting forces. The scale originally proposed, it 
will be remembered, produced an outburst of indig- 
nation, and it was very soon amended in the right 
direction, but when all is said and done it operates 
with amazing injustice. One of the most striki n g 
features of the war has been the splendid patriotism 
shown by men who, in social rank, are decidedly 
above the average standard of recruits. 

Many comparatively rich men have joined the 
Army as privates, and the roll descends in the 
social scale until we come down to the day labourer. 
We draw no distinction between the loyalty and 
devotion of any of our new soldiers, but it cannot 
be denied that the working of the system of separate 
allowances is exceedingly unfair to the men of the 
middle classes. 

Financially, the family of the working-man is 
frequently better off through the absence of the 
husband and father at the front than it has ever 
been before — sometimes very much better off indeed. 
I am not complaining of that. But when we ascend 
a little in the scale we find a glaring inequality. 
The man earning, say, £250 a year, and having a 
wife and one child, finds, too often, that the price 
he has to pay for patriotism is to leave his family 



62 BKITAIN'S DEADLY PEKIL 

dependent upon the Government allowance of 
17<s. 6d. per week. Is it a matter for wonder that 
so many have hesitated to join ? Can we praise too 
highly the patriotism of those who, even under such 
circumstances, have answered the call of duty ? 

The truth is that the whole system of separation 
allowances, framed to meet the necessity of recruits 
of the ordinary standard, is inelastic and unsuitable 
to a campaign which calls, or should call, the entire 
nation to arms. It is throwing a great strain on a 
man's loyalty to ask him to condemn his wife and 
family to what, in their circumstances, amounts to 
semi-starvation, in order that he may serve his 
country, particularly when he sees around him thou- 
sands of the young and healthy at theatres and 
picture palaces, free from any domestic ties, who 
persistently shut their eyes to their country's need, 
and whom nothing short of some measure of com- 
pulsion would bring into the ranks. I am not going 
to suggest that every man who joins the Army 
should be paid the salary he could earn in civil life, 
but I think we are not doing nearly enough for 
thousands of well-bred and gently nurtured women 
who have given up husbands and brothers in the 
sacred cause of freedom. 

And now I come to perhaps the saddest feature 
of the war — the case of the men who will return to 
England maimed and disabled in their country's 
cause. That, for them, is supreme glory, though 
many of them would have infinitely preferred 
giving their lives for their country. They will 
come back to us in thousands, the maimed, the 
halt, and the blind : pitiful wrecks of glorious 
manhood, with no hope before them but to drag 
out the rest of their years in comparative or abso- 
lute helplessness. Their health and their strength 



THE PERIL OF NOT DOING ENOUGH 63 

will have gone ; there will be no places for them 
in the world where men in full health and strength 
fight the battle of life in the fields of commerce 
and industry. Are ive doing enough — have we, 
indeed, begun to do anything — for these poor victims 
of war's fury, much more to be pitied than the 
gallant men who sleep for ever where they fell on 
the battlefields of France and Belgium ? 

Too often in the past it has been the shame and 
the reproach of Britain that she cast aside, like 
worn-out garments, the men who have spent their 
health and strength in her cause. Have we not 
heard of Crimean veterans dying in our workhouses 1 
With all my heart I hope that, after the war, we 
shall never again be open to that reproach and 
shame. We must see that never again shall a 
great and wealthy Empire disgrace itself by con- 
demning its crippled heroes to the undying bitterness 
of the workhouse during life, and the ignominy of a 
pauper's grave after death. Cost what it may, the 
future of the unhappy men " broke in our wars " 
must be the nation's peculiar care. I do not 
suggest— they themselves would not desire it- — 
that all our wounded should become State pensioners 
en masse and five out their lives in idleness. The 
men who helped to fling back the Kaiser's barbaric 
hordes in the terrible struggle at Ypres are not 
the men who will seek for mere charity, even when 
it takes the form of a deserved reward for their 
heroic deeds. 

Speaking broadly, the State will have the responsi- 
bility of caring for two classes of wounded men — 
those who are condemned to utter and lifelong 
disablement and those who, less seriously crippled, 
are yet unab]e to obtain employment in ordinary 
commercial or industrial life. As to the former 



64 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

class, the duty of the State is clear : they must be 
suitably maintained for the rest of their lives at 
the State's charges. With regard to the second 
class, I do most sincerely hope that they will not 
be thrown into the world with a small wounds 
pension and left to sink or swim as fortune and 
their scattered abilities may dictate. It is for us 
to remember that these men have given their 
health and strength that we might live in safety 
and peace, and we shall be covering ourselves with 
infamy if we fail to make proper provision for them. 
As I have already said, they do not want charity. 
They want work, and I venture to here make an 
earnest appeal to the public to take up the cause 
of these men with all its generous heart. First and 
foremost, such of them as are capable should be 
given absolute preference in Government and 
municipal offices, where there are thousands of 
posts that can be filled even by men who are partially 
disabled. Every employer of labour should make 
it his special duty to find positions for as many of 
these men as possible : there are many places in 
business houses that can be quite adequately filled 
by men of less than ordinary physical efficiency. 
Most of all, however, I hope the Government will, 
without delay, take up the great task of finding a 
way of setting these men to useful work of some 
kind. In the past much has been done in this 
direction by the various private agencies which 
interest themselves in the care of discharged soldiers. 
A war of such magnitude as the present, however, 
must bring in its wake a demand for work and 
organisation on a scale far beyond private effort; 
and if the disabled soldier is to be adequately cared 
for, only the resources of the State can be equal to 
the need. 



THE PERIL OF NOT DOING ENOUGH 65 

Are we doing enough, I ask again, for the gallant 
men who have served us so well ? There are 
those who fear that, comparatively speaking, the 
war has only just begun. However this may be, 
the tale of casualties and disablement rises day by 
day at a terrible pace, and there is a growing need 
to set on foot an organisation which, when the 
time comes, shall be ready to grapple at once with 
what will perhaps be the most terrible legacy the 
war can leave us. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PERIL OF THE CENSORSHIP 

War brings into discussion many subjects upon 
which men differ widely in their opinions, and the 
present war is no exception to the general rule. 

Amateur and expert alike argue on a thousand 
disputed points of tactics, of strategy, and of 
policy : it has always been so : probably it will be 
so for ever. But the censorship imposed by the 
Government, on the outbreak of war, has achieved 
a record. 

It has earned the unanimous and unsparing 
condemnation of everybody. Men who have agreed 
on no other point shake hands upon this. For 
sheer, blundering ineptitude, for blind inability to 
appreciate the mind and temper of our countrymen, 
in its utter ignorance of the psychological charac- 
teristics of the nation and of the Empire, to say 
nothing of the rest of the world, the methods of 
the censorship, surely, approach very closely the 
limits of human capacity for failure. 

When I say " the censorship " I mean, of course, 
the system, speaking in the broadest sense. It 
matters nothing whether the chief censor, for the 
moment, be, by the circumstance of the day, Mr. 
F. E. Smith or Sir Stanley Buckmaster. Both, I 
make no doubt, have done their difficult work 
to the best of their ability, and have been loyally 

66 



THE PERIL OF THE CENSORSHIP 67 

followed, to the best of their several abilities, by 
their colleagues. The faults and failures of the 
censorship have their roots elsewhere. 

Now to avoid, at the outset, any possibility of 
misunderstanding, I want to make it absolutely clear 
that in all the numerous criticisms that have been 
levelled at the censorship, objection has been taken 
not to the fact that news is censored, but to the 
methods employed and to the extent to which the 
suppression of news has been carried. 

I believe that no single newspaper in the British 
Isles has objected to the censorship, as such. I am 
quite sure that the public would very definitely con- 
demn any demand that the censorship should be 
abolished. Much as we all desire to learn the full 
story of the war, it is obvious that to permit the in- 
discriminate publication of any and every story sent 
over the wires, would be to make the enemy a present 
of much information of almost priceless value. 
Early and accurate information is of supreme im- 
portance in war time, and certainly no Englishman 
worthy of the name would desire that the slightest 
advantage should be offered to our country's enemies 
by the premature publication of news which, on 
every military consideration, ought to be kept secret. 

This is, unquestionably, the attitude of the great 
daily newspapers in London and the provinces, which 
have been the worst sufferers by the censor's eccen- 
tricities. They realise, quite clearly, the vital and 
imperative necessity for the suppression of infor- 
mation which would be of value to the enemy, and, 
as a matter of fact, the editors of the principal jour- 
nals exercise themselves a private censorship which 
is quite rigid, and far more intelligently applied 
than the veto of the official bureau. It would sur- 
prise a good many people to learn of the vast amount 



68 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

of information which, by one channel or another, 
reaches the offices of the great dailies long before the 
Press Bureau gives a sign that it has even heard of 
the matters in question. The great retreat from 
Mons is an excellent instance. It was known per- 
fectly well, at the time, that the entire British Ex- 
peditionary Force was in a position of the gravest 
peril, and it is, perhaps, not too much to say that had 
the public possessed the same knowledge there would 
have been a degree of depression which would have 
made the " black week " of the South African War 
gay and cheerful by comparison, even if there had 
not been something very nearly approaching an 
actual panic. 

But the secret was well and loyally kept within 
the walls of the newspaper offices, as I, personally, 
think it should have been : I do not blame the 
military authorities in the least for holding back 
the fact that the position was one of extreme gravity. 
Bad news comes soon enough in every war, and it 
would be senseless folly to create alarm by telling 
people of dangers which, as in this case, may in the 
end be averted. The public quarrel with the censor- 
ship rests on other, and totally different, grounds. 

That a strict censorship should be exercised over 
military news which might prove of value to the 
enemy will be cheerfully admitted by every one. We 
all know, despite official assurances to the contrary, 
that German spies are still active in our midst, and, 
even now, there is — or at any rate until quite recently 
there was — little or no difficulty in sending informa- 
tion from this country to Germany. No one will 
cavil at any restrictions necessary to prevent the 
enemy anticipating our plans and movements, and 
if the censorship had not gone beyond this, no one 
would have had any reason to complain. 



THE PERIL OF THE CENSORSHIP 69 

What may perhaps be called the classic instance 
of the perils of premature publication occurred 
during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. In 
those days there was no censorship, and France, in 
consequence, received a lesson so terrible that it is 
never likely to be forgotten. It is more than likely, 
indeed, that it is directly responsible for the merci- 
less severity of the French censorship to-day. 

A French journal published the news that Mac- 
Mahon had changed the direction in which his army 
was marching. The news was telegraphed to 
England and published in the papers here. It at 
once came to the attention of one of the officials of 
the German Embassy in London, who, realising its 
importance, promptly cabled it to Germany. For 
Moltke the news was simply priceless, and the altered 
dispositions he promptly made resulted in MacMahon 
and his entire force capitulating at Metz. Truly a 
terrible price to pay for the single indiscretion of a 
French newspaper ! 

It is not to be denied that to some extent certain 
of the " smarter " of the British newspapers are re- 
sponsible for the severity of the censorship in force 
to-day. In effect, the censorship of news in this 
country dates from the last war in South Africa. 
Some of the English journals, in their desire to secure 
" picture-stories," forgot that the war correspondent 
has very great responsibilities quite apart from the 
mere purveying of news. 

The result was the birth of a war correspondent 
of an entirely new type. The older men — the friends 
of my youth, Forbes, Burleigh, Howard Russell, and 
the like — had seen and studied war in many phases i 
they knew war, and distinguished with a sure in- 
stinct the news that was permissible as well as 
interesting, from the news that was interesting but 



70 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

not permissible. Their work, because of their know- 
ledge, showed discipline and restraint, and it can be 
said, broadly, that they wrote nothing which would 
advantage the enemy in the slightest degree. 

In the war in South Africa we saw a tremendous 
change. Many of the men sent out were simply able 
word-spinners, supremely innocent of military know- 
ledge, knowing absolutely nothing of military opera- 
tions, unable to judge whether a bit of news would be 
of value to the enemy or not. Their business was to 
get " word-pictures " — and they got them. In 
doing so they sealed the doom of the war corre- 
spondent. The feeble and inefficient censorship 
established at Cape Town, for want of intelligent 
guidance, did little or nothing to protect the Army, 
and the result was that valuable information, pub- 
lished in London, was promptly telegraphed to the 
Boer leaders by way of Lourenco Marques. Many 
skilfully planned British movements, in consequence, 
went hopelessly to pieces, and by the time war was 
over, Lord Roberts and military men generally were 
fully agreed that, when the next war came, it would 
be absolutely necessary to establish a censorship 
of a very drastic nature. 

We see that censorship in operation to-day, but 
far transcending its proper function. It was estab- 
lished — or it should have been established — for the 
sole purpose of preventing the publication of news 
likely to be of value to the enemy. Had it stopped 
there, no one could have complained. 

I contend that in point of fact it has, throughout 
the war, operated not merely to prevent the enemy 
getting news which it was highly desirable should 
be kept from him, but to suppress news which the 
British public — the most patriotic and level-headed 
public in all the world — has every right to demand. 



THE PERIL OF THE CENSORSHIP 71 

We are not a nation of board-school children or 
hysterical girls. Over and over again the British 
public has shown that it can bear bad news with 
fortitude, just as it can keep its head in victory. 
Those of us who still remember the terrible " black 
week " in South Africa, with its full story of the 
horror of defeat at Colenso, Magersfontein, and 
Stormberg, remember how the only effect of the 
disaster was the ominous deepening of the grim 
British determination to " see it through " : the 
tightening of the lips and the hardening of the jaws 
that meant unshakable resolve ; the silent, dour, 
British grip on the real essentials of the situation 
that, once and for all, settled the fate of Kruger's 
ambitions. 

Are Britons to-day so changed from the Britons 
of 1899 that they cannot bear the truth ; that they 
cannot face disaster ; that they are indeed the 
degenerates they have been labelled by boastful 
Germans ? Perish the thought ! Britain is not 
decadent ; she is to-day as strong and virile as of 
old and her sons are proving it daily on the plains 
of Flanders, as they proved it when they fought the 
Kaiser's hordes to a standstill on the banks of the 
Marne during the " black week " of last autumn. 
Why then should the public be treated as puling 
infants spoon-fed on tiny scraps of good news when 
it is happily available, and left in the bliss of ignor- 
ance when things are not going quite so well ? 

From November 20th, 1914, up to February 17th, 
1915 — a period of three months of intense anxiety 
and strain — not one single word of news from the 
Commander-in-Chief of the greatest Army Britain 
has ever put into the field was vouchsafed to the 
British public. For that, of course, it is impossible 
to blame Sir John French. But the bare fact is 



72 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

sufficient condemnation of the entirely unjustifiable 
methods of secrecy with which we are waging a war 
on which the whole future of our beloved nation and 
Empire depends. The public was left to imagine 
that the war had reached something approaching a 
" deadlock." The ever-mounting tale of casualties 
showed that, in very truth, there had been, in that 
silent period of three months, righting on a scale 
to which this country has been a stranger for a 
century. 

Will any one outside the Government contend 
that this absurd secrecy can be justified, either 
by military necessity or by a well-meant but, as 
I think, hopelessly mistaken regard for the feelings 
of the public ? 

We are not Germans that it should be necessary 
to lull us into a lethargic sleep with stories of 
imaginary victories, or to refrain from harrowing 
our souls when, as must happen in all wars, things 
occasionally go wrong. 

We want the truth, and we are entitled to have it ! 

I do not say that we have been deliberately told 
that which is not true. I believe the authorities 
can be acquitted of any deliberate falsification of 
news. But I do say, without hesitation, that much 
news was kept back which the country was entitled 
to know, and which could have been made public 
without the slightest prejudice to our military 
position. At the same time, publication has been 
permitted of wholly baseless stories, such as that of 
the great fight at La Bassee, to which I will allude 
later, which the authorities must have known to be 
unfounded. 

It is not for us to criticise the policy of our gallant 
Allies, the French. We must leave it to them to 
decide how much or how little they will reveal to 



THE PERIL OF THE CENSORSHIP 73 

their own people. I contend, with all my heart, 
that the British public should not have been fobbed 
off with the studiously — guarded French official 
report, with its meaningless — so far as the general 
public is concerned — daily recital of the capture or 
loss of a trench here and there, or with the chatty 
disquisitions of our amiable " Eye- Witness " at the 
British Headquarters, who manages to convey the 
minimum of real information in the maximum of 
words. It is highly interesting, I admit, to learn of 
that heroic soldier who brained four Germans " on 
his own " with a shovel ; it is very interesting to 
read of the " nut " making his happy and elaborate 
war-time toilet in the open air ; and we are glad to 
hear all about German prisoners lamenting the lack 
of food. But these things, and countless others of 
which " Eye- Witness " has told us, are not the root 
of the matter. We want the true story of the 
campaign, and the plain fact is that we do not get 
it, and no one pretends that we get it. 

Cheerful confidence is an excellent thing in war, 
as well as in all other human undertakings. Blind 
optimism is a foolhardy absurdity ; blank pessimism 
is about as dangerous a frame of mind as can be 
conceived. I am not quite sure, in my own mind, 
whether the methods of the censorship are best 
calculated to promote dangerous optimism, or the 
reverse, but I am perfectly certain that they are not 
calculated to evoke that calm courage and iron 
resolve, in the face of known perils, which is the 
best augury of victory in the long run. Probably 
they produce a result varying according to the 
temperament of the individual. One day you meet 
a man in the club who assures you that everything 
is going well and that we have the Germans " in 
our pocket." That is the foolishness of optimism, 
3* 



74 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

produced by the story of success and the suppres- 
sion of disagreeable truths. 

Twenty-four hours later you meet a gloomy in- 
dividual who assures you we are no nearer beating 
the Germans than we were three months ago. That 
is the depths of pessimism. Both frames of mind 
are derived from the " official news " which the 
Government thinks fit to issue. 

Here and there, if you are lucky, you meet the 
man who realises that we are up against the biggest 
job the Empire has ever tackled, and that, if we are 
to win through, the country must be plainly told 
the facts and plainly warned that it is necessary to 
make the most strenuous exertions of which we are 
capable. That is the man who forms his opinions 
not from the practically worthless official news, but 
from independent study of the whole gigantic 
problem. And that is the only frame of mind which 
will enable us to win this war. It is a frame of mind 
which the official news vouchsafed to us is not, in 
the least degree, calculated to produce. 

In the prosecution of a war of such magnitude as 
the present unhappy conflict the public feeling of a 
truly democratic country such as ours is of supreme 
importance. It is, in fact, the most valuable asset 
of the military authorities, and it is a condition 
precedent for success that the nation shall be frankly 
told the truth, so far as it can be told without 
damage to our military interests. 

Mr. Bonar Law, in the House of Commons, put 
the case in a nutshell when he said that — 

" He had felt, from the beginning of the war, that 
as much information was not being given as might 
be given without damage to national interests. No- 
thing could be worse for the country than to do what 
the Japanese did — conceal disasters until the end of 



THE PERIL OF THE CENSORSHIP 75 

the war. He did not say that there had been any 
concealment, but the one thing necessary was to let 
the people of this and other countries feel that our 
official news was true, and could be relied upon. He 
wondered whether the House realised what a tre- 
mendous event the battle of Ypres, in November, was. 
The British losses there, he thought, were bigger than 
any battle in which purely English troops were en- 
gaged. It was a terrible fight, against overwhelming 
odds, out of which British troops came with tremen- 
dous honour. All the account they had had was Sir 
John French's despatch. Surely the country could 
have more than that. Whoever was in charge, when 
weighing the possible damage which might be brought 
about by the giving of news, should also bear in 
mind the great necessity for keeping people in this 1 
country as well informed as possible." 

That, I venture to think, is a perfectly fair and 
legitimate criticism. The battle of Ypres was fought 
in November. Mr. Law was speaking in February. 
Who can say what the country would have gained 
in recruiting, in strength of determination, in 
everything that goes to make up the morale so 
necessary for the vigorous conduct of a great cam- 
paign, had it been given, at once, an adequate 
description of the "terrible fight against over- 
whelming odds " out of which the British Thomas 
Atkins came with so much honour ? 

The military critics of our newspapers have, per- 
haps, been one of the greatest failures of the entire 
campaign. One of them, on the day before Namur 
fell, assured us that the place could hold out for 
three months. Another asserted that the Russians 
would be in Berlin by September 10th. Another,, 
just before the Germans drove the Russians for the 
second time out of East Prussia, declared that 
Russia's campaign was virtually ended ! Besides^ 



76 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

all the so-called "histories " of the war published 
have been utter failures. Personally, I do not think 
the nation is greatly perturbed, at the present 
moment, about the conduct of the actual military 
operations. No one is a politician to-day, and there 
is every desire, happily, to support the Government 
in any measure necessary to bring the war to a 
conclusion. We have not the materials, even if it 
were desirable, to criticise the conduct or write the 
history of the war, and we have no wish to do so. 
But we desire to learn, and we have the right to 
learn, the facts. 

It has always been an unhappy characteristic of 
the military mind that it has been quite unable, 
perhaps unwilling, to appreciate the mentality of 
the mere civilian who only has to pay the bill, and 
look as pleasant as possible under the ordeal. And 
I suspect, very strongly, that it is just this feeling 
which lies at the root of a good deal of what we 
nave had to endure under the censorship. In its 
essence, the censorship is a military precaution, 
perfectly proper and praiseworthy, but only if 
applied according to the real needs of the situation. 
Quite properly the military mind is impatient of 
the intrusion of the civilian in purely military affairs, 
-and I have no doubt whatever that that fact explains 
the gratifying presence — in defiance of our long 
usage and to the annoyance of a certain type of 
politician — of Lord Kitchener at the War Office 
to-day. But military domination of the war situa- 
tion, however admirable from the military point of 
view, has failed to take into sufficient account the 
purely civilian interest in the progress of the war 
and the extent to which the military arm must rely 
upon the civilian in carrying the war to a successful 
conclusion. 



THE PERIL OF THE CENSORSHIP 77 

Our military organisation, rightly or wrongly y 
is based upon the voluntary system. We cannot, 
under present conditions, obtain, as the conscrip- 
tionist countries do, the recruits we require merely 
by calling to the Colours, with a stroke of the pen,, 
men who are liable for service. We have to request, 
to persuade, to advertise, and to lead men to see 
their duty and to do it. To enable us to do this 
satisfactorily, public opinion must be kept well in- 
formed, must be stimulated by a knowledge of the 
real situation. When war broke out, and volunteers 
were called for, a tremendous wave of enthusiasm 
swept over the country. The recruiting organisation 
broke down, and, as I have pointed out, the Govern- 
ment found themselves with more men on their 
hands than they could possibly train or equip at 
the moment. Instead of taking men's names, telling, 
them the exact facts, and sending them home to 
wait till they could be called for, the War Office- 
raised the physical standard for recruits, and this, 
dealt a blow at popular enthusiasm from which it 
has never recovered. Recruiting dropped to an 
alarming degree, and, so recently as February, Mr. 
Tennant, in the House of Commons, despite the 
efforts that had been made in the meantime, was 
forced to drop a pretty strong hint that " a little- 
more energy " was advisable. 

Now the connection between the manner in which 
the recruiting question was handled, and the general 
methods adopted by the censorship, is a good deal 
closer than might be imagined at first sight. Both 
show the same utter failure on the part of the mili- 
tary authorities to appreciate the psychology of the 
civilian. (Psychology, the science of the public 
opinion of the nation, must, in any democratic 
country, play a very large part in the successful 



78 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

conduct of a great war); and in sympathetic under- 
standing of the temper of the masses, our military 
authorities, alike in regard to the censorship and 
recruiting question, have been entirely outclassed 
by the autocratic officials of Germany. I do not 
advocate German methods. The gospel of hate 
and lies — which has kept German people at fever- 
heat — would fail entirely here. We need no 
" Hymns of Hate " or lying bulletins to induce 
Britons to do their duty if the needs of the 
situation are thoroughly brought home to them. 

But we have to face this disquieting fact, that, 
whatever the methods employed, the German people 
to-day are far more enthusiastic and determined in 
their prosecution of the war than we are. 

That is a plain and unmistakable truth. I do not 
believe the great mass of the British public realises, 
even to-day, vitally and urgently, the immense 
gravity of the situation, and for that I blame the 
narrow and pedantic views that have kept the 
country in comparative ignorance of the real facts 
of the situation. 

We have been at war for eight months and we 
have not yet got the men we require. Recruits 
have come forward in large numbers, it is true, and 
are still coming forward. But there is a very dis- 
tinct lack of that splendid and enduring enthusiasm 
which a true realisation of the facts would inevitably 
evoke. Priceless opportunities for stimulating that 
enthusiasm have been, all along, lost by the per- 
sistent refusal to allow the full story of British 
heroism and devotion to be told. 

We can take the battle of Ypres as a single out- 
standing example. The full story of that great fight 
would have done more for recruiting in a week than 
all the displayed advertisements and elaborate pla- 



THE PERIL OF THE CENSORSHIP 79 

cards with which our walls are so profusely adorned 
could achieve in a month ! 

Sir John French's despatch, as a military record, 
bears the hall-mark of military genius, but it is idle 
to pretend that it is a literary document calculated 
to stir the blood and fire the imagination of our 
countrymen. Admirable in its firm restraint from 
the military point of view, it takes no account of the 
civilian imagination. That is not Sir John French's 
business. He is a great soldier, and it is no reproach 
to him that his despatch is not exactly what is re- 
quired by the urgency of the situation. Moreover, 
it came too late to exercise its full effect. Had the 
story of Ypres been given to the public promptly, 
and in the form in which it would have been cast by 
a graphic writer who understood the subject with 
which he was dealing and the public for whom he 
was writing, we should probably have been better off 
to-day by thousands and thousands of the much- 
needed recruits. The failure to take advantage of 
such a glorious opportunity for the stimulation of 
enthusiasm by purely legitimate means, convicts 
our censorship authorities of a total failure to appre- 
ciate the mentality of the public whose supposed 
interests they serve. 

And as with successes, so with failures. It is the 
peculiar characteristic of the British people that 
either a great victory or a great disaster has the 
immediate result of nerving them to fuller efforts. 
We saw that in South Africa : it has been seen a 
hundred times in our long history. Let us turn for 
a moment to the affair at Givenchy on December 
20th. Sir John French's despatch makes it clear 
that the repulse of the Indian Division on that occa- 
sion was a very serious matter, so serious, in fact, 
that it required the full effort of the entire First 



80 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

Division, under Sir Douglas Haig, to restore the 
position. Yet, at the time, the British public was 
very far from fully informed of what had happened : 
much of our information, indeed, was derived from 
German sources ; and these sources being naturally 
suspect, the magnitude of the operations was never 
realised. 

There may have been excellent military reasons 
for concealing, for the moment, the real position, 
though I strongly suspect that the Germans were 
quite as well informed about it as we were. But 
there could be no possible reason for concealing the 
fact from the public for a couple of months, and thus 
losing another opportunity of powerfully stimulating 
our national patriotism and determination. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PERIL OF THE PRESS BUREAU 

It is one of the curses of our Parliamentary system 
that every piece of criticism is immediately ascribed 
to either party or personal motives, and politicians 
whose conduct or methods are impugned, for what- 
ever reason, promptly assume, and try to make others 
believe, that their opponents are actuated by the 
usual party or personal methods. 

At the present moment, happily, we have, for the 
first time within our memory, no politics ; the nation 
stands as one man in its resolve to make an end of 
the Teutonic aggression against the peace of the 
world. In the recent discussion in the House of 
Commons, however, Sir Stanley Buckmaster, head 
of the Press Bureau, upon whom has fallen the rather 
ruffled and uncomfortable mantle discarded by Mr. 
F. E. Smith, seems to have interpreted the very 
unanimous criticism of the censorship as a personal 
attack upon himself. As a brilliant lawyer, of course 
he had no difficulty in making a brilliant reply to a 
fallacy originated entirely in his own brain. 

In very truth the personality of Sir Stanley Buck- 
master concerns us not at all. He is a loyal English- 
man. He does not originate the news which the 
Press Bureau deals out with such belated parsimony. 
No one blames him for the fact that the nation is 
kept so completely in the dark on the subject of the 
war. If it were possible for Sir Stanley Buckmaster, 

81 



82 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

personally, to censor every piece of news submitted 
to the Press Bureau, there would, I venture to think, 
be a speedy end to the system — or want of system — 
which permits an item of intelligence to be pub- 
lished in Edinburgh or Liverpool, but not in London ; 
and that the speeches of Cabinet Ministers, reported 
in our papers verbatim, would be allowed free passage 
to the United States or to the Colonies. I wish here 
to do the head of the Press Bureau the justice to say 
that he is an Englishman who knows his own mind, 
and has the courage of his own convictions. Yet 
that does not alter the fact that the Press censor- 
ship as a system has worked unevenly, with very 
little apparent method, and with an amazing disre- 
gard of the best foreign and colonial opinion which, 
all along, it has been our interest to keep fully in- 
formed of the British side of the case. 

When the subject was last before the House of 
Commons, some very caustic things were said. Mr. 
Joseph King, the Radical member for North Somer- 
set, moved, and Sir William Byles, the Radical mem- 
ber for North Salford, seconded, the following rather 
terse motion : 

" That the action of the Press Bureau in restrict 
ing the freedom of the Press, and in withholding 
information about the war, has been actuated by no 
clear principle and has been calculated to cause 
suspicion and discontent." 

Now it will be noted that there is, in the first place, 
no possibility of attributing this motion to political 
hostility. Both the mover and the seconder are 
supporters of the Government, not merely at the 
present moment, as of course all Englishmen are, 
but in the ordinary course of nightly political war- 
fare. Mr. King did not mince matters. He roundly 
charged the Press Bureau with exercising inequality, 



THE PERIL OF THE PRESS BUREAU 83 

particularly in denying the publication in London of 
news permitted to be published in the provinces and 
on the Continent. He pressed, too, for the issue of 
an official statement two or three times a week. 
This, of course, has since been granted, and it is a 
very decided improvement. Mr. Joynson-Hicks, 
from the Conservative benches, very truly empha- 
sised the fact that the people of this country want 
the truth, even if it meant bad news, and added that 
they also wanted to hear about the heroism of our 
troops and the valorous deeds of any individual 
regiments. 

Sir Stanley Buckmaster, in reply, denied some- 
what vehemently that he had ever withheld, for 
five minutes, any information he had about the war, 
and asserted that nothing had ever been issued from 
his office that was not literally and absolutely true. 

Now, as I have said, Sir Stanley Buckmaster's 
hide-bound department does not originate news, 
and cannot be held responsible for either the fullness 
or the accuracy of the official statements. When 
Sir Stanley Buckmaster tells us that he has never 
delayed news I accept his word without demur. 
But when he says nothing has been issued from his 
department which is not " literally and absolutely 
true," then I ask him what he means by " literally 
and absolutely true " ? If he means that the news 
which his department has issued has contained no 
actual misstatements on a point of fact, I believe his 
claim to be fully justified. If he means, on the 
other hand, that the Press Bureau, or those 
behind it, have told the nation the whole truth, he 
makes an assertion which the nation with its gritted 
teeth to-day will decline, and with very good reason, 
to accept. To quote Mr. Bonar Law's words again : 
" from the beginning of the war as much informa- 



84 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

1 
tion has not been given as might have been given 
without damage to national interests." To such 
full information as may be given without damage 
to national interests the nation is entitled, and no 
amount of official sophistry and hair-splitting can 
alter that plain and demonstrable fact. 

Mr. King, in the resolution I have quoted, charged 
the head of the Bureau with exercising inequality as 
between different newspapers. Now this amounts 
to a charge of deliberate unfairness which it is very 
difficult indeed to accept. The House of Commons, 
in fact, did not accept it. None the less, the fact 
remains that not once or twice, but over and over 
again, news has been allowed publication in one 
paper and refused in another, not merely as between 
London and the provinces, but as between London 
newspapers which are, necessarily, keen rivals. In 
support of this assertion I will quote one of the 
strongest supporters of the Government among the 
London newspapers — the Daily Chronicle. There 
will be no question of political partisanship about this. 
After quoting the views of the Times and two 
Liberal papers — the Star and the Westminster 
Gazette — the Daily Chronicle said : 

" The methods of the Censor are, certainly, a little 
difficult to understand. There reached this office 
yesterday afternoon, from our correspondent at 
South Shields, a long story of the sinking of vessels 
in the North Sea. It was submitted to us by the 
Censor, who made a number of excisions in it. The 
telegram was returned to us with the following note 
by our representative at the Press Bureau : 

" ' The Censor particularly requests that South 
Shields be not mentioned, though we can state 
"from our East Coast correspondent."' 
" In the meantime the evening newspapers ap- 
peared with accounts of some occurrences in which 



THE PERIL OF THE PRESS BUREAU 85 



most of the deletions made by the Censor in the 
Daily Chronicle report were given ! The Censor made 
the following remarks and excisions in the * copy ' 
submitted to him by the Daily Chronicle representative 
at the Press Bureau : 

Whebe the Forbidden Pas- 



Excisions in " Daily 
Chboniole " Repobt 

" Please do not mention 
that this came from South 
Shields." (Note by the 
Censor.) 



" Within twenty miles of 
the mouth of Shields har- 
bour " — (passage elimina- 
ted). 

" Landed a cargo of fish 
at Grimsby." (" At Grims- 
by " was eliminated.) 



" Landed by North 
Shields fishing steamer." 
("North Shields" elimin- 
ated.) 

" Bound for Blyth." 
(" Blyth " eliminated.) 



From the Daily Chronicle 
Special Correspondent. 



Paris, August 21th. 
The Ministry of War 
issued this afternoon the 
following note : "In the 

region between " (here 

the Censor has cut out a 
short passage) " our troops 
continue to progress." 



SAGES APPEABED 

Shields occurred in the re- 
ports in the Star (three times), 
Evening News (once), Pall Mall 
Gazette (three times), Globe 
(three times), Evening Standard 
(three times), Westminster Ga- 
zette (once). 

Star report stated : " The 
trawler was sunk thirty miles 
E.N.E. of the Tyne." 

This identical phrase, or its 
effect, appeared in the Star, 
Pall Mall Gazette, Globe, Even- 
ing Standard, Westminster 
Gazette. 

The North Shields trawler 
was mentioned by the Star, 
Pall Mall Gazette, Globe, Even- 
ing Standard. 

This phrase appeared in the 
Star, Pall Mall Gazette, Globe, 
and Evening Standard. 



A Central News telegram 
from Paris ran as follows 
(passed by Cable Censor) : 

Paris, Thursday 
The following official com- 
munique is issued to the Press 
at 2.15 this afternoon: "In 
the region between the Vosges 
and Nancy our troops continue 
to progress." 



86 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

" Thus we were free to mention the offending pas- 
sage on the authority of the Central News Agency, 
but not on that of * our own correspondent ' ! What 
can be more ridiculous than this ? " 

The importance of the last portion of the Daily 
Chronicle article lies in the fact that we have here 
a clear case of mutilation of the French official 
despatch, which the French papers even were free 
to publish ! 

The Daily Chronicle also mentioned another case 
in which its special correspondent in Paris sent 
a long despatch giving, on the authority of M. 
Clemenceau, a statement published in Paris, that 
the 1 5th Army Corps gave way in a moment of panic. 
The Censor refused permission to publish it, but 
another journal published a quotation under the 
heading : " French Soldiers who wavered : Officers 
and Men punished by Death." 

I ought, in fairness, to say, in passing, that 
the instances quoted above took place before Sir 
Stanley Buckmaster assumed control of the Press 
Bureau, and that no responsibility attaches to him 
in respect of any of them. 

Now, bad as has been the effect of the censorship 
on public opinion at home, it has been even worse 
abroad, and particularly in the United States, where 
the German propaganda had full play, while the 
British case was sternly withheld. The American 
Press has not hesitated to say that our censors 
were incompetent and discriminated unfairly between 
one paper and another. This was untrue in the 
sense in which it was meant, but it was certainly 
unfortunate, to put it mildly, that the news of the 
declaration of war was allowed to be issued by one 
New York journal, and withheld for seven hours 
from the Associated Press, which represents 9,000 



THE PERIL OF THE PRESS BUREAU 87 

American and Canadian newspapers. It was, per- 
haps, still more unfortunate that even the speeches 
of Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey on the subject 
of the declaration of war should have been similarly 
delayed. Why 1 Telegraphic reports of these 
speeches were held up for four days by the censors at 
cable offices and were then " censored" before they 
were despatched. I ask> could mischievous and 
bungling stupidity go farther than this ? 

Here is another case. In one of his speeches, Mr. 
Asquith, on a Friday night in Dublin, announced 
that the Indian troops were, that day, landing at 
Marseilles. The speech, and the statement, were 
reported next day in the London newspapers. After 
the publication of this, the Press Bureau forbade 
any mention of the landing of the Indian troops ! 

In the House of Commons, on September 10th, 
Mr. Sherwell exposed another instance of the 
ridiculous vagaries of the unequal censorship. In 
the Daily Chronicle, he said, there was published a 
brilliant article by Mr. Philip Gibbs — who was with 
me during the first Balkan campaign — describing the 
actual operations of Sir John French's army up to 
the last few days. That article was published 
without comment and without criticism in the 
Daily Chronicle, yet the cable censor refused to allow 
it to be sent to the New York Times. Again why 1 

It is, or should be, the function of the Press 
Bureau not merely to supply the public with 
accurate news, but to make sure that false or mis- 
leading reports are promptly suppressed. The 
reason for this is obvious. We do not wish to be 
depressed by unfounded stories of disaster, nor do 
we wish to experience the inevitable reaction which 
follows when we learn that we have been deluded by 
false news of a great victory. Whatever may be the 



88 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

raison d'etre of the Press Bureau, it is assuredly not 
maintained for the purpose of assisting in the circula- 
tion of utterly futile fiction about the progress of 
the campaign. 

Again : Are we told the truth ? 

Early in January a report — passed of course by 
the Censor — appeared in practically every news- 
paper in the country, and probably in thousands of 
papers in all parts of the British Empire, announcing 
the capture by the British troops of a very important 
German position at La Bassee. The engagement 
was described as a brilliant one, in which the enemy 
lost heavily ; circumstantial details were added, and 
on the face of it the news bore every indication of 
being based on trustworthy reports from the fighting 
line. It is true that it was not official, but the 
eircumstances made it so important that, inasmuch 
as it had been passed by the Censor, it was naturally 
assumed by every newspaper editor to be accurate. 
A few days later every one was amazed to learn, 
from official sources, that there was not a word of 
truth in the whole story ! Yet the Censor had 
actually passed it for publication. And so the public 
pay their halfpennies to be gulled ! 

I say, without hesitation, that this incident casts 
the very gravest reflection on the discretion and 
efficiency of the whole censorship. To permit the 
publication of an utterly baseless story of this 
nature, is simply to assist in hoaxing the public 
and the crying of false news. We await the next 
hoax. We may have it to-morrow. Who knows ? 
The Censors in the matter are on the threshold of 
a dilemma. If the story in question were true, it 
ought to have been published on official authority 
without delay : as it was untrue, its publication 
should have on no account been permitted. 



THE PERIL OF THE PRESS BUREAU 8^ 

Consider the circumstances. Sir John French, on 
November 20th, stated that throughout the battle of 
Ypres-Armentieres, the position at La Bassee had 
defied all efforts at capture, and naturally the most 
intense anxiety had been felt for news of a definite 
success in this region. Yet the public, after hearing, 
by official sanction, the news of a success which 
would clearly have resulted in the Germans being 
driven pell-mell out of La Bassee, were calmly 
told, a few days later, that the entire story was a 
lie. To my mind, and I think the reader will agree 
with me, we could have no stronger illustration 
of the utter futilities and farcical eccentricities of 
the censorship as it to-day exists. Are we told 
the truth about the war ? No, I declare — W% are 
riot ! 

I will go a step farther. The suppression of news 
by the censorship is bad enough, but what are we 
to think of a deliberate attempt to stifle per- 
fectly legitimate criticisms of Ministers and their 
methods ? 

As those who read these pages are aware, I have 
taken a prominent part in the effort to bring home 
to the public the dire peril to which we are exposed 
through the presence in our midst of hordes of 
uncontrolled enemy aliens. I deal with this sub- 
ject elsewhere, and I should not mention it here 
except that it is connected in a very special way 
with an attempt on the part of the Press Bureau 
to stifle public discussion on a matter of the gravest 
importance. 

The Globe newspaper has, with commendable 
patriotism, devoted much attention to the question 
of the presence of alien spies in our midst, and, on 
many occasions, its correspondence and editorial 
columns have contained valuable information and 



90 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

comments. On September 10th last the Globe pub- 
lished the following letter : 

" Press Bureau, 

" 40, Charing Cross. 

" September 1th, 1914. 

" Dear Sib, 

" Mr. F. E. Smith desires me to draw your 
attention to a letter headed ' A German's Outburst/ 
which appeared in your issue of the 2nd instant, and 
a facsimile of which appeared in your issue of the 
4th instant. This letter has received the notice of 
the Home Secretary, who expresses the view that 
' the articles and letters in the Globe are causing 
something in the nature of a panic in the matter of 
spies ' and desires that they should be suppressed 
at once. In view of this expression of opinion by 
the Home Secretary, Mr. Smith has no doubt that 
you will refrain, in the future, from publishing 
articles or letters of a similar description. 
" Yours very truly, 

" Harold Smith, Secretary." 

Very properly, the Globe pointed out that, in this 
matter, " nothing less is at stake than the liberty 
of the Press to defend the public interest and criticise 
the administrative acts of a Minister of the Crown." 
The unwarrantable attempt of the Home Secretary, 
through the Press Bureau, to suppress criticism of 
this nature, to stop the mouths of those who insisted 
on warning the public of a peril which he has, all 
along, blindly refused to see, raises a constitutional 
issue of the very gravest kind. The Globe promptly 
asked the Press Bureau under what authority it 
claimed the " power to suppress the free expression 
of opinion in the English press on subjects wholly 
^unconnected with military or naval movements." 
Mr. Harold Smith's reply was the amazing assertion 



THE PERIL OF THE PRESS BUREAU 91 

that such powers were conferred by the Defence of 
the Realm Acts. He wrote : 

" Press Bureau, 

" 40, Charing Cross. 
" September 8th, 1914. 

" Dear Sir, 

"I am instructed by Mr. F. E. Smith to 
acknowledge your letter of to-day's date. On Mr. 
Smith's direction, I wrote you a letter, which, on 
re-reading, you will perceive was intended to convey 
to you the opinion of the Home Office, rather than 
an expressed intention of censorship in this Bureau. 
You will, of course, use your own discretion in the 
matter, but Mr. Smith thinks that a consideration of 
the terms of the Defence of the Realm Acts (Nos. 1 
and 2), and the regulations made thereunder, will 
satisfy you that the Secretary of State is not without 
the legal powers necessary to make his desire for 
supervision effective. 

" Yours faithfully, 

" Harold Smith, Secretary." 

This reads very much like a threat to try the 
editor of the Globe by court-martial for the heinous 
offence of suggesting that Mr. McKenna's handling 
of the spy-peril was not exactly what was required 
by the exigencies of the public safety. I must say 
that when I read the correspondence I was inclined 
to tremble for my own head ! So far, however, it 
is still safe upon my shoulders. I, as a patriotic 
Englishman who has dared to speak his mind, have 
no intention of desisting — even at the risk of being 
court-martialled — from the efforts I have continued 
for so long to arouse my countrymen to a realisation 
of the dangers to which we are exposed by the 
obstinate refusal of the Government to face facts. 

The privilege of the Press to criticise Ministers 



92 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

was boldly asserted by the Globe, which, in a leading 
article, said : 

" That correspondence . . . raises issues directly 
affecting the independence of the Press and its right 
to frank and unfettered criticism. At the time when 
we are receiving from our ever-increasing circle of 
readers many gratifying tributes to the sanity of our 
views, and the informing character of our columns,, 
we are accused of publishing matter calculated to 
induce panic, and we have been called upon to suppress 
at once the articles and letters directing attention 
to the dangers arising from the lax methods of the 
Home Secretary in dealing with the alien enemy in 
our midst." 

After referring to a statement made by Mr. 
McKenna in the House of Commons the previous 
day as likely "to do something to allay public 
anxiety " on the subject, the Globe proceeded : 

" We are content with the knowledge that the atti- 
tude of the Globe has done something to convince the 
Government of the widespread feeling that the danger 
from the alien enemy we harbour is real, and the 
fear justified. Here we should be content to leave 
the question for the present, but for the attitude of 
the Home Secretary in seeking to prevent comment 
and criticism on his administrative acts, coupled with 
the veiled suggestion from the Press Bureau of power 
possessed under an Emergency Act. This attempt 
at pressure is made through a department set up for 
quite other and legitimate purposes. ... If a 
Government Department, under cover of an Order 
in Council made for a wholly different purpose, is to 
shield itself from an exposure of its inefficiency, a 
dangerous precedent is set up, dangerous alike to the 
community and the Press." 



THE PERIL OF THE PRESS BUREAU 93 

We have to bear in mind, in this connection, that 
the Press Bureau had just been reorganised. Mr. F. 
E. Smith had resigned, on leaving for the front, and 
the Home Secretary was the Minister responsible to 
Parliament for its conduct. At his request the Press 
Bureau endeavoured to prevent the Globe continuing 
to criticise his action, or rather inaction. Well in- 
deed might the Globe say 3 " We must reserve to 
ourselves the right, at all times, to give expression 
to views on Ministerial policy and even to dare to 
criticise the action of the Home Secretary.' ' And 
I venture to say that, but for the jealousy inherent 
among British newspapers, the Globe would have had 
the unanimous support of every metropolitan and 
provincial journal, every single one of which was 
vitally affected by the Home Secretary's preposterous 
claim. 

The claim of the country for fuller information 
has been expressed in many ways, and by many 
people, and it has been admitted by no less a per- 
sonage than Mr. Asquith himself. In the House of 
Commons early in September Mr. Asquith said the 
Government felt " that the public is entitled to 
prompt and authentic information of what has hap- 
pened at the front, and they are making arrange- 
ments which they hope will be more adequate." 

That was months ago, and, up to the present, very 
few signs of the "prompt and authentic informa- 
tion " have been perceptible. 

Even more significant is the following passage 
from the latest despatches of Sir John French, which 
covered the period from November 20th to the be- 
ginning of February 3 

" I regard it as most unfortunate that circum- 
stances have prevented any account of many splendid 



94 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

instances of courage and endurance, in the face of 
almost unparalleled hardship and fatigue of war, 
coming regularly to the knowledge of the public." 

Now I do not want to read into Sir John French's 
words a meaning that he did not intend to convey, 
but this passage certainly strikes me, as it has struck 
many others, as a very definite plea for the presence 
at the front of duly accredited and responsible war 
correspondents. 

And why not ? News could be still censored so 
that no information of value could reach the enemy. 
We should not be prejudiced one iota, but, on the 
other hand, should get prompt and trustworthy 
news, written by skilled journalists in a fashion that 
would make an irresistible appeal to the manhood 
of Britain. And we should be far nearer than we 
are to-day to learning " the truth about the war." 

It has been urged, on behalf of the Press Bureau, 
that of late matters have been very much improved. 
My journalistic friends tell me that so far as the 
actual working is concerned this is a fact. There 
has undoubtedly been less of the haphazard methods 
which were characteristic of the early days. But 
there is still too much of what the Times very pro- 
perly calls the " throttling " of permissible news, 
and, in spite of the fact that two despatches a week 
are now published from Sir John French, we are 
still in the dark as to the real story of the great cam- 
paign. Neither our successes nor our failures are 
adequately described. We are still not told " the 
truth about the war." 

And I cannot help saying that the deficiencies of 
the official information are not made up by the tactics 
of certain sections of the Press. There is too much 
of a tendency to magnify the good and minimise 



THE PERIL OF THE PRESS BUREAU 9& 

the bad. There are too many " Great Victories " 
to be altogether convincing. As the Morning Post 
put it a 

" There seems to be a large section of the public 
which takes its news as an old charwoman takes her 
penn'orth of gin, * for comfort.' And some of our con- 
temporaries seem to cater for this little weakness. 
Every day there is a * great advance ' or a ' brilliant 
victory,' and if a corporal's guard is captured or 
surrenders we have a flaming announcement on al£ 
the posters." 

It is very true. From the fiercest critics of the 
Press Bureau's methods we do not to-day get " the 
truth about the war," even so far as they know it. 
Even the Daily News has been moved to raise a 
protest against the present state of affairs, and as 
recently as March 15th declared that the mind of 
authority " is being fed on selected facts that convey 
a wholly false impression of things." 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN 

"Every enemy alien is known, and is now under 
iComtant police surveillance. " — Mr. Tennant, Under- 
Secretary for War, in the House of Commons, 
March 3rd. 

One of the gravest perils with which the country 
as still faced is that of the enemy alien. 

Notwithstanding all that has been written and 
said upon this most serious question, Ministers are 
still content to pursue a shuttlecock policy, in which 
there is very little satisfaction for any intelligent 
patriot. 

Each time the subject is brought up in the House 
of Commons there is an apparent intention of the 
^Government to wilfully throw dust into the eyes of 
the public, and prevent the whole mystery of the 
official protection afforded to our enemies being 
-sifted to the bottom. A disgraceful illustration of 
this was given on March 3rd, when Mr. Joynson- 
Hicks moved : 

" That in the opinion of this House it is desirable 
that the whole administration of the Acts and Regula- 
tions concerning aliens and suspected persons should 
be centred in the hands of one Minister, who should 
be responsible to the House." 

96 



THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN 97 

The debate which followed was illuminating. Sir 
Henry Dalziel, who is strongly in favour of a Central 
Board to deal with spies among us — a suggestion I 
made in my recent book " German Spies in England," 
as a satisfactory solution of the problem — said, in 
the course of a splendid speech, that the Govern- 
ment knew that, at the present moment, there was 
a settled spy-system, and there was no use denying 
it. As the Daily Telegraph on the following day 
pointed out, that there is such a system is almost 
as natural an assumption as that the enemy pos- 
sesses an army service organisation or a Press censor- 
ship. I have already pointed out, in various books 
I have written, that systematic espionage is, and 
has been for many years, a most cherished part 
of German war administration, developed with char- 
acteristic thoroughness. The question is whether 
that department of the enemy's activity has, or has 
not, been stamped out as regards this country ; and 
it would be idle to pretend that there is any public 
confidence that it has been stamped out. 

There is an absence of vigour and an absence of 
system about the dealing with this source of danger, 
and I maintain that the national safety requires the 
taking of this matter more seriously, and the placing 
of it upon a satisfactory footing. The Government 
admitted that, on March 3rd, seven hundred male 
enemy aliens were living in the East Coast prohibited 
area, and we know that arrangements for their con- 
trol are so futile as to leave, quite unmolested, some 
individuals whose known connections expose them 
to the highest degree of suspicion. Of one such 
notorious case, Mr. Bonar Law — who cannot, surely, 
be accused of spy-mania — declared that he would 
as soon have allowed a German army to land as 
allow the person in question to be at large in this 

4 



98 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

country. How the arrangement has worked in 
another particular case was exposed in some detail 
by Mr. Butcher. The lady concerned is closely 
related to more than one of those in power in Ger- 
many. Her case was reported to the War Office. 
The War Office called upon the General Officer 
commanding in the Northern District to take action. 
He requested the police to make inquiries, and the 
Chief Constable of the East Riding subsequently 
reported, " strongly recommending " the removal 
of the lady from the prohibited area. The General 
accepted this advice, and an order was made for her 
removal on January 25th. It was never executed ; 
and on February 7th it was withdrawn. 

Such is one illustration of the utter hopelessness 
of the present state of affairs. And yet, in face 
of it, Mr. Tennant, Under-Secretary for War, actually 
rose and made the definite assertion that every 
enemy alien was known and constantly watched ! 

Could any greater and more glaring official 
untruth be told ? 

Is every enemy alien known, I ask ? Let us 
examine a case in point, one in which I have made 
personal investigation, and to the truth of which 
a dozen officers of His Majesty's service, and also 
civilians, are ready to testify. 

Investigations recently made in certain German 
quarters in London, notably in the obscure foreign 
restaurants in the neighbourhood of Tottenham 
Court Road, where men — many of them recently 
released from internment-camps — and women meet 
nightly and toast to the Day of Britain's destruc- 
tion, revealed to me a startling fact. Here, posing 
as an Italian and a neutral, I learnt facts regarding 
the movements of German aircraft long before they 
were known either to our own authorities or to 



THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN 99 

the Press. For several weeks this fact, I confess, 
caused me considerable thought. Some secret 
means of communication must, I realised, exist 
between the enemy's camp and London, perhaps 
by wireless, perhaps by the new German-laid cable, 
the shore-end of which is at Bacton, in Norfolk, 
and which, eighteen months ago, in company with 
the German telegraph-engineers, I assisted to test 
as it was laid across the North Sea to Nordeney. 
In the archives of the Intelligence Department of 
the War Office will be found my report, together 
with a copy of the first message transmitted by the 
new cable from Norfolk to Germany, a telegram 
from one of the Kaiser's sons who happened to be 
in Scotland at the time, and addressed to the 
Emperor, which read : " Hurrah for a strong 
navy ! " — significant indeed in the light of recent 
events ! 

I was wondering if, by any secret means, this 
cable could be in operation when, on the afternoon 
of February 23rd, an officer of the Naval Armoured 
Car Squadron called upon me and invited me to 
assist in hunting spies in Surrey. The suggestion 
sounded exciting. Signals had been seen for a 
month or so past, flashed from a certain house high 
upon the Surrey hills. Would I assist in locating 
them, and prosecuting a full inquiry ? 

Within half an hour I was in a car speeding 
towards the point where mystery brooded, and 
which we did not reach till after dark. A gentleman 
living three miles across the valley, whose house 
commanded full view of the house under suspicion 
— a large one with extensive grounds — at once 
placed a room at our disposal, wherein we sat and 
watched. In the whole of these investigations I 
was assisted by an officer who was an expert in 



100 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

signalling and wireless, a signaller of the service, 
two other officers equally expert in reading the 
Morse code, while I myself have qualified both in 
Morse and wireless, and hold the Postmaster- 
General's licence. 

On the previous evening an all-night vigil had 
been kept, and messages had been read, but I only 
here record my own experiences of this exciting 
spy-hunt. On reaching our point of vantage I 
learned that suspicion had first been aroused by a 
mysterious and intense white light being shown 
from a window in the country mansion in question, 
which was situated upon so strategic a point that 
it could be seen very many miles in the direction 
of London. And there, sure enough, was the one 
brilliant light — at all other windows of the house 
the blinds being drawn — shining like a beacon all 
over the country. It had shone first at 6.30 p.m. 
that night, and, as I watched, it showed till 6.48, 
when it disappeared. After three minutes it was 
shown till 7.30 exactly, when suddenly it signalled 
in Morse the code-letters " S. M." repeated twice, 
and then disappeared till 9 o'clock, when again the 
same signal was made. The light remained full on 
for ten minutes, and was then suddenly switched 
off. 

This was certainly remarkable. The officers with 
me — all experts in signalling — were unanimous as 
to the two letters, and also to their repetition. 
These signals, I learned, had been seen times 
without number, but until the smart young officer 
who had called upon me had noticed them, no 
action had been taken. 

Having established that mysterious signalling 
was really in progress, I set forth upon further 
investigation. Taking my own signallmg-appara- 



THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN 101 

tus, a very strong electric lamp with accumulators 
and powerful reflectors, which would show for 
fifteen miles or more, I got into the car with 
my companions — who were eager to assist — and, 
having consulted ordnance-maps and compass, we 
went to a spot high-up in an exposed position, 
where I anticipated the answering light from the 
mansion might be seen. 

We found ourselves in a private park, upon a 
spot which, by day, commands an immense stretch 
of country, and from which it is said that upon 
a clear day the Sussex coast can be seen. Here 
we erected our signalling-apparatus and waited in 
patience. The night proved bitterly cold, and as 
the hours crept slowly by, the sleet began to cut 
our faces. Yet all our eyes were fixed upon that 
mysterious house which had previously signalled. 

For hours we waited in vain until, of a sudden, 
quite unexpectedly from the direction of London, 
we saw another intense white light shining from out 
the darkness. For a full half -hour it remained 
there, a beacon like the other. Then suddenly it 
began winking, and this was the code-message it 
sent 5 

" S. H. I. S. (pause) H. 5. (pause) S. H. I. S. F. 
(pause with the light full on for two minutes). I. S. 
I. E. (pause) E. S. T. (light out)." 

Turning my signal-lamp in its direction, I re- 
peated the first portion of the mysterious message, 
and then, pretending not to understand, asked 
for a repetition. At once this was given, and, 
with my companions, I received it perfectly 
clearly ! 

Sorely tempted as I was to signal further, I 



102 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

refrained for fear of arousing suspicion, and, actu- 
ated by patriotic motives, we agreed at once to 
prosecute our inquiry further, and then leave it 
to "the proper authorities" to deal with the 
matter. 

Through the whole of that night — an intensely 
cold one — we remained on watch upon one of the 
highest points in Surrey, a spot which I do not 
here indicate for obvious reasons — and not until 
the grey dawn at last appeared did we relinquish 
our watchfulness. 

All next day, assisted by the same young officer 
who had first noticed the unusual lights, I spent 
in making confidential inquiry regarding the mys- 
terious house and elicited several interesting facts, 
one being that the family, who were absent from 
the house showing the lights, employed a servant who, 
though undoubtedly German — for, by a ruse, I suc- 
ceeded in obtaining the address of this person's family 
in Germany — was posing as Swiss. That a brisk 
correspondence had been kept up with persons in 
Germany was proved in rather a curious way, and 
by long and diligent inquiry many other highly 
interesting facts were elicited. With my young 
officer friend and a gentleman who rendered us 
every assistance, placing his house and his car 
at our disposal, we crept cautiously up to the 
house in the early hours one morning, narrowly 
escaping savage dogs, while one adventure of my 
own was to break through a boundary fence, only 
to find myself in somebody's chicken-run ! 

That night was truly one of adventure. Never- 
theless, it established many things — one being that 
in the room whence the signals emanated was a 
three-branch electrolier with unusually strong bulbs, 
while behind it, set over the mantelshelf, was a 



THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN 103 

mirror, or glazed picture, to act as a reflector in 
the direction of London. The signals were, no 
doubt, made by working the electric-light switch. 

The following night saw us out again, for already 
reports received had established a line of signals 
from a spot on the Kent coast to London and 
farther north, other watchers being set in order 
to compare notes with us. Again we watched the 
beacon-light on the mysterious house. We saw 
those mysterious letters " S. M." — evidently of 
significance — winked out in Morse, and together 
we watched the answering signals. All the evening 
the light remained full on until at 1.30 a.m. we 
once more watched "S. M." being sent, while soon 
after 2 a.m. the light went out. 

In the fourteen exciting days and nights which 
followed, I motored many hundreds of miles over 
Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, instituting inquiries and 
making a number of amazing discoveries, not the 
least astounding of which was that, only one hour 
prior to the reception of that message on the first 
evening of our vigil — " H. 5 " — five German aero- 
planes had actually set out from the Belgian coast 
towards England ! That secret information was 
being sent from the Kent coast to London was now 
proved, not only at one point, but at several, where 
I have since waited and watched, and, showing 
signals in the same code, have been at once answered 
and repeated. And every night, until the hour of 
writing, this same signalling from the coast to 
London is in progress, and has been watched by 
responsible officers of His Majesty's Service. 

After the first nights of vigilance, I had satisfied 
myself that messages in code were being sent, 
so I reported — as a matter of urgency — to the 
Intelligence Department of the War Ofiice — that 



104 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

department of which Mr. McKenna, on March 3rd, 
declared, " There is no more efficient department of 
the State." The result was only what the public 
might expect. Though this exposure was vouched 
for by experts in signalling, men wearing His 
Majesty's uniform, all the notice taken of it has been 




War Of floe, 

Whitehall, 

S.W. 

27th February 1915. 



The Director of Military Operations presents his 

compliments to Mr. W. Le Queux , and 

begs to acknowledge, with thanks, the receipt of his letter 

of the 25th inst. which is receiving attention. 



a mere "printed acknowledgment — reproduced above — 
that my report had been received, while to my 
repeated appeals that proper inquiry be made I 
have not even received a reply ! 

But further. While engaged in watching in 
another part of Surrey on the night of March 3rd, 
certain officers of the Armoured Car Squadron, who 
were keeping vigil upon the house of mystery, saw 



THE PERIL OP THE ENEMY ALIEN 105 

some green and white rockets being discharged from 
the top of the hill. Their suspicions aroused, they 
searched and presently found, not far from the house 
in question, a powerful motor-car of German make 
containing three men. The latter when challenged 
gave no satisfactory account of themselves, there- 
fore the officers held up the car while one of them 
telephoned to the Admiralty for instructions. The 
reply received was " that they had no right to detain 
the car ! " But, even in face of this official policy of 
do-nothing, they took off the car's powerful search- 
light, which was on a swivel, and sent it to the 
Admiralty for identification. 

This plain straightforward statement of what is 
nightly in progress can be substantiated by dozens 
of persons, and surely, in face of the observations 
taken by service men themselves — the names of 
whom I will readily place at the disposal of the 
Government — it is little short of a public scandal 
that no attempt has been made to inquire into 
the matter or to seize the line of spies simul- 
taneously. It really seems plain that to-day the 
enemy alien may work his evil will anywhere as a spy. 
On the other hand, it is a most heinous offence for 
anybody to ride a cycle without a back-lamp ! 

It will be remembered that in Norfolk it has been 
found, by Mr. Holcombe Ingleby, M.P. for King's 
Lynn, that the Zeppelin raid on the East Coast was 
directed by a mysterious motor-car with a search- 
light. Therefore the apathy of the Admiralty in not 
ordering full inquiry into the case in question will 
strike the reader as extraordinary. 

This is the sort of proceeding that gives force to the 
contention of those supporting the motion of Mr. 
Joynson-Hicks in the House of Commons, that the 
whole matter of spies ought to be placed in the 

4* 



106 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

hands of a special authority devoted to it alone, and 
responsible to Parliament. As things stand, the 
country is certainly in agreement with Mr. Bonar 
Law in believing that the Government " have not 
sufficiently realised the seriousness of this danger, 
and have not taken every step to make it as small as 
possible." Most people will agree with Mr. John 
S. Scrimgeour, who, commenting upon the shuffling 
of the Government, said : 

" Let the Press cease from blaming the strikers. 
Also let * the men in power ' cease from their censur- 
ing, for very shame. Can I, or any man in the street, 
believe that we are ' fighting for our lives ' while the 
enemy lives contentedly among us ? Read the 
debate, and take as samples mentioned therein — 
' Brother of the Governor of Liege,' ' German Financial 
Houses,' and ' Baron von Bissing,' Don't make 
scapegoats of these working-men, or even of the non- 
enlisting ones, while such is the case. Neither they, 
nor any one else in his senses, can believe in the 
seriousness of this ' life struggle ' while the above 
state of things continues. It is laughable — or 
deadly." 

The Intelligence Department of the War Office 
— that Department so belauded by Mr. McKenna — 
certainly did not display an excess of zeal in the case 
of signalling in Surrey, for, to my two letters begging 
that inquiry be made as a matter of urgency, I was 
not even vouchsafed the courtesy of a reply. Yet 
I was not surprised, for in a case at the end of 
January in which two supposed Belgian refugees, 
after living in one of our biggest seaports and making 
many inquiries there, being about to escape to 
Antwerp, I warned that same Department and 
urged that they should be questioned before leaving 
London. I gave every detail, even to the particular 



THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN 107 

boat by which they were leaving for Flushing. No 
notice, however, was taken of my report, and not 
until three days after they had left for the enemy's 
camp did I receive the usual printed acknowledg- 
ment that my report had been received ! " 

That night-signalling has long been in progression 
the South of England is shown by the following. 
Written by a well-known gentleman, it reached me 
while engaged in my investigations in Surrey. He 
says : 

" The following facts have been brought to my 
notice, and may be of interest to you. In the first 
week of October six soldiers were out on patrol duty 
around Folkestone looking for spies — always on 
night-duty. 

" One night they saw Morse signalling going on on 
a hill along the sea outside Folkestone. The signal- 
ling was in code. They divided into two parties of 
three, and proceeded to surround the place. Od 
approaching, a shot was heard, and a bullet went 
through the black oilskin coat of one man (they were 
all wearing these over their khaki). They went on 
and discovered two Germans with a strong acetylene 
lamp, one of them having a revolver with six cham- 
bers, and one discharged, also ten spare rounds of 
ammunition. 

" They secured them and took them to the police 
station, but all that happened was that they were 
shut up in a concentration camp ! This story was 
told me by one of the six who were on duty, and 
assisted at the capture." 

To me, there is profound mystery in the present 
disinclination of the Intelligence Department of the 
War Office to institute inquiry. As a voluntary 
worker in that department under its splendid chief, 
Col. G. W. M. Macdonogh — now, alas ! transferred 



108 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

elsewhere — my modest reports furnished from many 
places, at home and abroad, always received im- 
mediate attention and a private letter of thanks 
written in the Chief's own hand. 

On the outbreak of war, however, red-tape 
instantly showed itself, and I received a letter 
informing me that I must, in future, address 
myself to the Director of Military Operations — 
the department which is supposed to deal with 
spies. 

I trust that the reader will accept my words when 
I say that I am not criticising Lord Kitchener's very 
able administration. If I felt confident that he, and 
he alone, was responsible for the surveillance of 
enemy aliens in our midst, then I would instantly 
lay down my pen upon the subject. But while 
the present grave peril continues, and while the 
Government continue in their endeavour to bewilder 
and mislead us by placing the onus first upon the 
police, then, in turn, upon the Home Office — which, 
it must be remembered, made an official statement 
early in the war and assured us that there were no 
spies — then upon the War Office, then upon the 
Admiralty War Staff, while they, in turn, shift 
the responsibility on to the shoulders of the local 
police-constable in uniform, then I will continue to 
raise my voice in protest, and urge upon the public to 
claim their right to know the truth. 

This enemy alien question is one of Britain's 
deadliest perils, and yet, by reason of some mys- 
terious influence in high quarters, Ministers are 
straining every muscle to still delude and mislead 
the public. These very men who are audacious 
enough to tell us that there are no German spies in 
Great Britain are the same who, by that secret 
report of the Kaiser's speech and his intention 



THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN 109 

to make war upon us which I furnished to the 
British Secret Service in 1908, 1 knew the truth, yet 
nevertheless adopted a policy that was deliberately 
intended to close the eyes of the British public 
and lull it to sleep, so that, in August, our 
beloved nation nearly met with complete disaster. 

But the British public to-day are no longer chil- 
dren, nor are they in the mood to be trifled with 
and treated as such. The speeches made by Mr. 
McKenna in the House of Commons on March 3rd 
have revealed to us that the policy towards aliens 
is one of untruth and sham. The debate has aroused 
an uneasiness in the country which will only be 
restored with the greatest difficulty. To be deliber- 
ately told that the Intelligence Department of the 
War Office is cognisant of every enemy alien — in 
face of what I have just related — is to ask the public 
to believe a fiction. And, surely, fiction is not what 
we want to-day. We want hard fact — substantiated 
fact. We are not playing at war — as so many people 
seem to think because of the splendid patriotism 
of the sons of Britain — but we are fighting with all 
our force in defence of our homes and our loved 
ones, who, if weak-kneed counsels prevail, will most 
assuredly be butchered to make the Kaiser a German 
holiday. 

That public opinion is highly angered in conse- 
quence of the refusal of the Government to admit 
the danger of spies, and face the problem in a proper 
spirit of sturdy patriotism, is shown by the great 
mass of correspondence which has reached me in 
consequence of my exposures in " German Spies in 
England." The letters I have received from all 
classes, ranging from peers to working-men, testify 

1 For a full report of this astounding speech see " German 
Spies in England," by William Le Queux, 1915. 



110 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

to an astounding state of affairs, and if the reader 
could but see some of this flood of correspondence 
which has overwhelmed me, he would realise the 
widespread fear of the peril of enemy aliens, and 
the public distrust of the apathy of the Government 
towards it. 

Surely this is not surprising, even if judged only 
by my own personal experiences. 



HOW THE PUBLIC ARE DELUDED! 

The " Times," February 17th The " Times," March 4th 

The Secretary of the Admiralty Mr. Tennant, Under-Secretary for 

makes the following announcement : War, during the debate in the House 

Information has been received that of Commons upon the question of 

two persons, posing as an officer and enemy aliens, raised by Mr. Joynson- 

sergeant, and dressed in khaki, are Hicks, said he could give the House 

going about the country attempting the assurance that every single enemy 

to visit military works, etc. alien was known, and was at tlte present 

They were last seen in the Midlands moment under constant police sur- 

on the 6th instant, when they effected veillance. He wished to inform the 

an entry into the works of a firm who House and the country that they had 

are doing engineer's work for the Ad- at the War Office a branch which in- 

miralty. They made certain inquiries eluded the censorship and other ser- 

as to the presence or otherwise of anti- vices all directed to the one end of 

aircraft guns, which makes it probable safeguarding the country from the 

that they are foreign agents in dis- operations of undesirable persons. It 

guise. would not be right to speak publicly of 

All contractors engaged on work for the activities of that branch, but it was 

H.M. Navy are hereby notified with a doing most admirable service, and he 

view to the apprehension of these in- repudiated with all earnestness the 

dividuals, and are advised that no suggestion that the department did 

persons should be admitted to their not take this matter of espionage with 

works unless notice has been received the utmost seriousness, 
beforehand of their coming. 



Let us further examine the facts. Mr. McKenna, 
in a speech made in the House of Commons on 
November 26th on the subject, said : " The moment 
the War Office has decided upon the policy, the Home 
Office places at the disposal of the War Office the 
whole of its machinery." On March 3rd the Home 
Secretary repeated that statement, and declared, 
in a retortfmade to Mr. Joynson-Hicks, that he 
was not shirking responsibility, as he had never had 



THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN 111 

any ! Now, if this be true, why did Mr. McKenna 
make the communique to the Press soon after the 
outbreak of war, assuring us that there were no 
spies in England, and that all the enemy aliens were 
such dear good people ? I commented upon it in 
the Daily Telegraph on the following day, and over 
my own name apologised to the public for my past 
offence of daring to mention that such gentry had 
ever existed among us. If Lord Kitchener were 
actually responsible, then one may ask why had 
the Home Secretary felt himself called upon to tell 
the public that pretty fairy-tale ? 

Now with regard to the danger of illicit wireless. 
Early in January 1914 — seven months before the 
outbreak of war — being interested in wireless myself, 
and president of a Wireless Association, my sus- 
picions were aroused regarding certain persons, some 
of them connected with an amateur club in the 
neighbourhood of Hatton Garden. Having thor- 
oughly investigated the matter, and also having 
been able to inspect some of the apparatus used by 
these persons, I made, on February 17th, 1914, a 
report upon the whole matter to the Director of 
Military Intelligence, pointing out the ease with 
which undesirable persons might use wireless. The 
Director was absent on leave, and no action was 
taken in the matter. 

A month later I went to the Wireless Department 
of the General Post Office, who had granted me my 
own licence, and was received there with every 
courtesy and thanked for my report, which was 
regarded with such seriousness that it was forwarded 
at once to the Admiralty, who have wireless under 
their control. In due course the Admiralty gave 
it over to the police to make inquiries, and the whole 
matter was, I suppose — as is usual in such cases — 



112 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

dealt with and reported upon by a constable in 
uniform. 

Here let me record something further. 
In February last I called at New Scotland Yard 
in order to endeavour to get the police to make 
inquiry into two highly suspicious cases, one of a 
person at Winchester, and the other concerning 
signal-lights seen north-east of London in the Metro- 
politan District. I had interviews with certain 
officials of the Special Department, and also with 
one of the Assistant Commissioners, and after much 
prevarication I gathered — not without surprise — 
that no action could be taken without the consent of 
the Home Office I How this latter fact can be in 
accordance with the Home Secretary's statement in 
the House of Commons I confess I fail to see. 

But I warn the Government that the alien peril — 
now that so many civil persons have been released 
from the internment camps — is a serious and growing 
one. The responsibility should, surely, not be 
placed upon, or implied to rest upon, Lord Kitchener, 
who is so nobly performing a gigantic task. If the 
public believed that he was really responsible, then 
they, and myself, would at once maintain silence. 
The British public believes in Lord Kitchener, and, 
as one man, will follow him to the end. But it 
certainly will not believe or tolerate this see-saw 
policy of false assurances and delusion, and the 
attempt to stifle criticism — notably the case of the 
Globe — of which the Home Office have been guilty. 
There is a rising feeling of wrath, as well as a belief 
that the peril from within with which the country 
is faced — the peril of the thousands of enemy aliens 
in our midst — most of whom are not under control — 
together with the whole army of spies ready and 
daily awaiting, in impatience, the signal to strike 



THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN 113 

simultaneously — is wilfully disregarded. Even the 
police themselves — no finer body of men than whom 
exists anywhere in the world — openly express disgust 
at the appalling neglect of the mysterious so-called 
" authorities " to deal with the question with a firm 
and strong hand. 

Naturally, the reader asks why is not inquiry 
made into cases of real suspicion reported by re- 
sponsible members of the community. I have 
before me letters among others from peers, clergy- 
men, solicitors, justices of the peace, members of 
city councils, a well-known shipowner, a Govern- 
ment contractor, Members of Parliament, baronets, 
etc., all giving me cases of grave suspicion of spies, 
and all deploring that no inquiry is made, applica- 
tion to the police being fruitless, and asking my 
advice as to what quarter they should report them. 

All these reports, and many more, I will willingly 
place at the service of a proper authority, appointed 
with powers to effectively deal with the matter. 
At present, however, after my own experience as 
an illustration of the sheer hopelessness of the 
situation, the reader will not wonder that I am 
unable to give advice. 

Could Germany's unscrupulous methods go farther 
than the scandal exposed in America, in the late 
days of February, of how Captain Boy-Ed, Naval 
Attache of the German Embassy at Washington, 
and the Kaiser's spy-master in the United States, 
endeavoured to induce the man Stegler to cross 
to England and spy on behalf of Germany ? In 
this, Germany is unmasked. Captain Boy-Ed was 
looked upon as one of the ablest German naval 
officers. He is tall and broad-shouldered, speaks 
English fluently, and in order to Americanise his 
appearance has shaved off his " Prince Henry " 



114 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

whiskers which German naval officers traditionally 
affect. When he took up his duties at Washington 
he was a man of about forty-five, and ranked in the 
German navy as lieutenant-commander. But his 
career of usefulness as Naval Attache, with an office 
in the shipping quarters of New York, has been 
irretrievably impaired by the charges of Stegler, 
whose wife produced many letters in proof of the 
allegation that the attache was the mainspring of 
a conspiracy to secure English-speaking spies for 
service to be rendered by German submarines and 
other German warships on the British side of the 
Atlantic. 

The plot, exposed in every paper in the United 
States, was a low and cunning one, and quite in 
keeping with the methods of the men of " Kultur." 
Mrs. Stegler, a courageous little woman from 
Georgia, saw how her husband — an export clerk in 
New York — was being drawn into the German net 
as a spy, and she stimulated her husband to give 
the whole game away. To the United States police, 
Stegler, at his wife's suggestion, was perfectly 
frank and open. He exposed the whole dastardly 
plot. He stated that Captain Boy-Ed engineered 
the spy-plot that cost Lody his life, and declared 
that in his dealings with the attache the matter 
of going to England as a spy progressed to a point 
where the money that was to be paid to his wife 
for her support while he was in England was dis- 
cussed. Captain Boy-Ed, Stegler went on to say, 
agreed to pay Mrs. Stegler £30 a month while he 
was in England, and furthermore agreed that if 
the British discovered his mission and he met the 
fate of Lody, Mrs. Stegler was to receive £30 a 
month from the German Government as long as 
she lived I 



THE PERIL OP THE ENEMY ALIEN 115 

Stegler said he told his wife of the agreement to 
pay to her the amount named, and that she asked 
him what guarantee he could give that the money 
would be paid as promised. At that time Mrs. 
Stegler did not know the perilous nature of the 
mission that her husband had consented to under- 
take. When Stegler reported fully to his American 
wife, and she got from him the entire story of his 
proposed trip to England, she, like a brave woman, 
determined to foil the conspiracy. Captain Boy- 
Ed was not convincing regarding the payment to 
her for the services of her husband as a spy by the 
German Government for life, and she told her 
husband that the German Government would pro- 
bably treat Captain Bod-Ed's promise to pay as a 
" mere scrap of paper." Having been urged to 
study the recent history of Belgium, Stegler con- 
fessed that he had his doubts. Finally he resolved 
to reveal the existence of a plot to supply German 
spies from New York. 

Could any facts be more illuminating than these ? 
Surely no man in Great Britain, after reading this, 
can further doubt the existence of German-American 
spies among us. 

There is not, I think, a single reader of these 
pages who will not agree with the words of that 
very able and well-informed writer who veils his 
identity in the Referee under the nom-de-plume of 
" Vanoc." On March 14th he wrote : 

" This is no question of Party. I am not going to 
break the Party truce. In the interests of the British 
Empire, however, I ask that a list of all the men of 
German stock or of Hebrew-German stock who have 
received distinctions, honours, titles, appointments, 
contracts, or sinecures, both inside or outside the 
House of Commons, House of Lords, and Privy Coun- 



116 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

cil, shall be prepared, printed, and circulated. Also 
a list of Frenchmen, Russians, and Colonials so 
honoured. It is also necessary for a clear under- 
standing of the spy-question that the public should 
know whether it is a fact that favoured German 
individuals have contributed large sums to political 
Party funds on both sides, and whether the tenderness 
that is shown Teutons or Hebrew-Teutons decorated 
or rewarded with contracts, favours, or distinctions 
is due to the obvious fact that if dangerous spies were 
not allowed their freedom Party government would 
be exposed, discredited, and abolished." 

This is surely a demand which will be heartily 
supported by every one who has the welfare of his 
country at heart. Too long have we been misled 
by the bogus patriotism of supposed " naturalised " 
Germans, who, in so many cases, have purchased 
honours with money filched from the poor. 
" Vanoc " in his indictment goes on to say : 

" The facts are incredible. I know of one case of 
a German actually employed on Secret Service at the 
War Office. This German is the son of the agent of 
a vast German enterprise engaged in making muni- 
tions and guns for the destruction of the sons, brothers, 
and lovers of the very Englishwomen who are now 
engaged most wisely and energetically in waking the 
country to a sense of the spy-peril that lurks in our 
midst. The British public does not understand a 
decimal point of a tithe of the significance of the spy- 
peril. Nonsense is talked about spies. Energy is 
concentrated on the little spies, who don't count. 
Much German money is wasted on unintelligent spies. 
The British officers to whom is entrusted the duty of 
spy-taking, if they are outside the political influence 
which is poisonous to our national life, are probably 
the best in the world. The big spies are still potent 
in control of our national life." 



THE PERIL OF THE ENEMY ALIEN 117 

Are we not, indeed, coddling the Hun ? 

Even the pampering of German officers at Don- 
ington Hall pales into insignificance when we recol- 
lect that, upon Dr. Macnamara's admission, £86,000 
a month, or £1,000,000 per year, is being paid for 
the hire of ships in which to intern German prisoners, 
and this is at a time when the scarcity of shipping 
is sending up the cost of every necessity ! The 
Hague Convention, of course, forbids the use of 
gaols for prisoners of war, yet have we not many 
nice comfortable workhouses, industrial schools, 
and such-like institutions which could be utilised ? 
We all know how vilely the Germans are treating 
our officers and men who are their prisoners, even 
depriving them of sufficient rations, and forbidding 
tobacco, fruit, or tinned vegetables. With this in 
view, the country are asking, and not without 
reason, why we should treat those in our hands as 
welcome guests. Certainly our attitude has pro- 
duced disgust in the Dominions. 

How Germany must be laughing at us ! How 
the enemy aliens in certain quarters of London are 
jeering at us, openly, and toasting to the Day of our 
Downfall, I have already described. How the spies 
among us — unknown in spite of Mr. Tennant's 
amazing assertion — must be laughing in their 
sleeves and chuckling over the panic and disaster 
for which they are waiting from day to day in the 
hope of achieving. The signal — the appearance 
of Zeppelins over London — has not yet been given. 
Whether it will ever be given we know not. All we 
know is that an unscrupulous enemy, whose influence 
is widespread over our land, working insidiously 
and in secret, has prepared for us a blow from within 
our gates which, when it comes, will stagger even 
Mr. McKenna himself. 



118 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

With the example of how spies, in a hundred 
guises, have been found in Belgium, in France, in 
Russia, in Egypt, and even in gallant little Serbia, 
can any sane man believe that there are none to-day 
in Great Britain ? No. The public know it, and 
the Government know it, but the latter are en- 
deavouring to hoodwink those who demand action 
in the House of Commons, just as they endeavour 
to mystify the members of the public who present 
reports of suspicious cases. 

The question is : Are we here told the Truth ? 

I leave it to the reader of the foregoing pages to 
form his own conclusions, and to say whether he is 
satisfied to be further deluded and mystified without 
raising his voice in protest for the truth to be told, 
and the spy-peril to be dealt with by those fully 
capable of doing so, instead of adopting methods 
which are daily playing into Germany's hands and 
preparing us upon the altar of our own destruction. 

I have here written the truth, and I leave it to 
the British public themselves to judge me, and to 
judge those who, failing in their duty at this grave 
crisis of our national history, are courting a disaster 
worse than that which overtook poor stricken 
Belgium. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PERIL OF DELUDING THE PUBLIC 

As showing the trend of public opinion regarding the 
spy-peril, I may perhaps be permitted to here give 
a few examples taken haphazard from the huge mass 
of correspondence with which I have been daily 
flooded since the publication of my exposure on that 
subject. 

Many of my correspondents have, no doubt, made 
discoveries of serious cases of espionage. Yet, as 
spies are nobody's business, the authorities, in the 
majority of cases, have not even troubled to inquire 
into the allegations made by responsible persons. I 
freely admit that many wild reports have been 
written and circulated by hysterical persons who 
believe that every twinkling light they see is the 
flashing of signals, and that spies lurk in houses in 
every quiet and lonely spot. It is so very easy to 
become affected with spy-mania, especially when 
one recollects that every German abroad is patriotic, 
and his first object is to become a secret agent of the 
Fatherland. In this connection I have no more trust 
in the so-called " naturalised " German than in the 
full-blooded and openly avowed Prussian. Once 
a man is born a German he is always a German, and 
in taking out naturalisation papers he is only de- 
liberately cheating the country which grants them, 
because, according to the Imperial law of his own 

119 



120 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

land, he cannot change his own nationality. So 
let us, once and for all, dismiss for ever the hollow 
farce of naturalisation, for its very act is one of 
fraud, and only attempted with some ulterior 
motive. 

As regards " unnaturalised " Germans the in- 
quirer may perhaps be permitted to ask why Baron 
von Ow-Wachendorf, a lieutenant in the Yellow 
Uhlans of Stuttgart, just under thirty years of age, 
was permitted to practise running in Hyde Park so 
as to fit himself for his military duties, and why was 
he on March 1st allowed to leave Tilbury for Holland 
to fight against us ? Again, has not Mr. Ronald 
McNeill put rather a delicate problem before the 
Under-Secretary for War in asking, in the House, 
whether Count Ergon von Bassewitz and his brother, 
Count Adalbert von Bassewitz, were brought to 
England as prisoners of war ; whether either was 
formerly on the Staff of the Germany Embassy in 
London, and well known in London Society ; whether 
one, and which, of the two brothers was recently 
set at liberty, and is now at large in London ; whether 
he was released on any and what conditions ; and 
for what reason this German officer, possessing ex- 
ceptional opportunities for obtaining information 
likely to be useful to the enemy, is allowed freedom 
in England at the present time. 

The man-in- the-street who has, in the past, laughed 
at the very idea of spies — and quite justly, be- 
cause he has been so cleverly misled and bamboozled 
by official assurances — has now begun to see that 
they do exist. He has read of a hundred cases 
abroad where spies have formed a vanguard of the 
invading German armies, and how no fewer than 
fifty-seven German spies were arrested and convicted 
in Switzerland during the month of August, therefore 



THE PERIL OF DELUDING THE PUBLIC 121 

he cannot disguise from himself that the same das- 
tardly vanguard is already here among us. Then 
he at once asks, and very naturally too, why do the 
authorities officially protect them ? What pro- 
German influence in high quarters can be at work 
to connive at our undoing ? It is that which is to- 
day undermining public confidence. Compare our 
own methods with those of methodical matter-of- 
fact Germany ? Are we methodical ; are we tho- 
rough ? The man-in-the-street who daily reads his 
newspaper — if he pauses or reflects — sees quite 
plainly that instead of facing the alien peril, those 
in authority prefer to allow us to sit upon the edge 
of the volcano, and have, indeed, already actually 
prepared public opinion to accept a disclaimer of 
responsibility if disaster happens. The whole situa- 
tion is truly appalling. Little wonder is it that, be- 
cause I should have dared to lay bare the canker in 
Britain's heart, I should be written to by despairing 
hundreds who have lost all confidence in certain of 
our rulers. 

Some of these letters the reader may find of 
interest. 

From one, written by a well-known gentleman 
living in Devonshire, I take the following, which 
arouses a new reflection. He says : 

11 1 may be wrong, but one important point seems 
to have been overlooked, viz. the daily publication 
of somewhat cryptic messages and advertisements 
appearing in the Personal Columns of the British 
Press. For instance : 

" ' M. — Darling. Meet as arranged. Letter per- 
fect. Should I also write ? To " the Day, and 
Kismet."— Vilpar/ 

" Such a message may be, as doubtless it is, per- 
fectly innocent ; but what is to prevent spies in our 



122 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

midst utilising this method of communicating in- 
formation to the enemy. The leading British news- 
papers are received in Germany, and even the enclosed 
pseudo-medical advertisement may be the message 
of a traitor. It seems to me that the advertisement 
columns of our Press constitute the safest medium for 
the transmission of information. 

" Pray do not think I am suggesting that the 
British Press would willingly lend their papers to 
such an infernal use, but unless they are exercising 
the strictest precautions the loophole is there. I 
am somewhat impressed by the number of refugees 
to be found in these parts — Ilfracombe, Combe 
Martin, Lynton, etc., coast towns and villages of 
perhaps minor strategic importance, but situated on 
the Bristol Channel and facing important towns like 
Swansea, Cardiff, etc. I notice particularly that 
their daily walks abroad are usually taken along the 
coastal roads. I've never met them inland. Apolo- 
gising for the length of this letter and trusting that 
your splendid efforts will in due time receive their 
well-deserved reward." 

Here my correspondent has certainly touched 
upon a point which should be investigated. We 
know that secret information is daily sent from 
Great Britain to Berlin, and we also know some of 
the many methods adopted. 

Indeed, I have before me, as I write, a spy's letter 
sent from Watford to Amsterdam, to be collected 
by a German agent and ref or warded to Berlin. It 
is written upon a column of a London daily news- 
paper, various letters of which are ticked in red ink 
in several ways, some being underlined, some crossed, 
some dotted underneath — a very ingenious code 
indeed — but one which has, happily, been decoded 
by an expert. This newspaper, after the message 
had been written upon it, had been placed in a news- 



THE PERIL OF DELUDING THE PUBLIC 123 



paper-wrapper and addressed to an English name 
in Amsterdam. This is but one of the methods. 
Another is the use of invisible ink with which spies 



HOW THE GOVERNMENT HAVE ADOPTED 
MR. LE QUEUX'S SUGGESTION 



" German Spies in England," by Wil- 
liam Le Queux. Published Feb- 
ruary 17th, 1915. 

The first step to stop the activity 
of spies should be the absolute closing 
of the sea routes from these shores to 
all persons, excepting those who are 
vouched for by the British Foreign 
Office. Assume that the spy is here ; 
how are we to prevent him getting 
out? 

By closing the sea routes to all who 
could not produce to our Foreign Office 
absolutely satisfactory guarantees of 
their bona fides. The ordinary pass- 
port system is not sufficient ; the For- 
eign Office should demand, and see 
that it gets, not only a photograph, but 
a very clear explanation of the busi- 
ness of every person who seeks to 
travel from England to the Continent, 
backed by unimpeachable references 
from responsible British individuals, 
banks, or firms. 

In every single case of application 
for a passport it should be personal, 
and the most stringent inquiries 
should be made. I see no other means 
of putting an end to a danger which, 
whatever the official apologists may 
say, is still acute, and shows no signs of 
diminishing. 

Under the best of conditions some 
leakage may take place. But our 
business is to see, by every means we 
can adopt, that the leakage is reduced 
to the smallest possible proportions. 



" Daily Mail," March Uth, 1915 

Holiday-makers or business men 
who wish to travel to Holland now find 
that their preliminary arrangements 
include much more than the purchase 
of a rail and steamship ticket. 

New regulations, which came into 
force on Monday, necessitate not only 
a passport, but a special permit to 
travel from the Home Office. Appli- 
cation for this permit must be made 
in person three clear days before sail- 
ing. Passport, photograph, and cer- 
tificate of registration must be pro- 
duced and the names and addresses 
of two British subjects furnished as 
references. 

The Home Office erected a special 
building for this department, which 
was opened on Thursday last, the first 
day on which application could be 
made. Before lunch over 250 appli- 
cations had been received. By four 
o'clock, the official hour for closing, 
nearly 500 persons had been attended 
to, and the crowd was even then so 
great that the doors had to be closed 
to prevent any more entering. In- 
tending travellers included British, 
French, and Dutch business men, but 
quite a large number of Belgian re- 
fugees attended for permits to return 
to their country. The Tilbury route 
was the only one open to them. Not 
all the applications were granted. It 
is necessary to furnish reasonable and 
satisfactory evidence as to the object 
of the journey, and some of the appli- 
cants were unable to do this. 



write their messages upon the pages of newspapers 
and magazines. A third is, no doubt, the publica- 
tion of cryptic advertisements, as suggested by my 
correspondent. 

Of other means of communication, namely, night- 



124 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

signalling — of which I have given my own personal 
experience in the previous chapter — my corre- 
spondents send me many examples. 

The same code-signal as a prefix — the letters 
" S. M." — are being seen at points as far distant as 
Heme Bay and Alnwick, on both the Yorkshire and 
Fifeshire coasts, above Sidmouth and at Ilfracombe. 
Dozens of reports of night-signalling lie before me — 
not mere statements of fancied lights, but facts 
vouched for by three and four reliable witnesses. 
Yet, in face of it all, the authorities pooh-pooh it, 
and in some counties we have been treated to the 
ludicrous spectacle of the civil and military authori- 
ties falling at loggerheads over it ! 

Belgian refugees writing to me have, in more than 
one instance, reported highly interesting facts. In 
one case an ex-detective of the Antwerp police, now 
a refugee in England, has identified a well-known 
German spy who was in Antwerp before the Ger- 
mans entered there, and who came to England in 
the guise of a refugee ! This individual is now in an 
important town in Essex, while my informant is 
living in the same town. Surely such a case is one 
for searching inquiry, and the more so because the 
suspect poses as an engineer, and is in the employ of 
a firm of engineers who do not suspect the truth. 
But before whom is my friend, the Belgian ex- 
detective, to place his information ? 

True, he might perhaps lay the information 
before the Chief Constable of the County of Essex, 
but in his letter to me he asks, and quite naturally, 
is it worth while ? If the Intelligence Department of 
the War Office — that Department so belauded in the 
House of Commons by Mr. McKenna on March 3rd 
— refuses to investigate the case of signalling in 
Surrey, cited in the last chapter, and vouched for by 



THE PERIL OF DELUDING THE PUBLIC 125 

the officers themselves, then what hope is there 
that they would listen to the report of a mere 
refugee — even though he be an ex-detective ? 

As I turn over report after report before me I see 
another which seems highly suspicious. A hard-up 
German doctor — his name, his address, and many 
facts are given — living at a Kent coast town, where 
he was a panel doctor, suddenly, on the outbreak 
of war, removes to another Kent coast town not far 
from Dover, takes a large house with grounds high 
up overlooking the sea, and retires from practice. 
My informant says he has written to the Home 
Office about it, but as usual no notice has been taken 
of his letter. 

Another correspondent, a well-known shipowner, 
writing me from one of our seaports in the north, 
asks why the German ex-consul should be allowed 
to remain in that city and do shipping business 
ostensibly with Rotterdam % By being allowed 
his freedom he can obtain full information as to 
what is in progress at this very important Scotch 
port, and, knowing as we do that every German 
consul is bound to send secret information to Berlin 
at stated intervals, it requires but little stretch of 
one's imagination to think what happens. But the 
matter has already been reported to the police and 
found to be, as elsewhere, nobody's business. Phew ! 
One perspires to think of it ! 

Take another example — that of a German hotel- 
keeper who, living on the coast north of the Firth 
of Forth, was proved to have tapped the coast- 
guard telephone, and yet he was allowed to go free ! 

A lady, well known in London society, writes to 
me requesting me to assist her, and says : "I have 
been working for five months to get a very sus- 
picious case looked into, and all the satisfaction I get 



126 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

is that ' the party is being watched.' I know to what 
extent this same person has been working against 
my country and I should much appreciate an inter- 
view with you. I could tell you very much that 
would be of great benefit to the country, but it of 
course falls on deaf ears — officially." 

Another correspondent asks why Germans, natural- 
ised or unnaturalised, are allowed to live in the 
vicinity of Heme Bay when none are allowed 
either at Westgate or Margate. In this connection 
it is curious that it is from Heme Bay the mysterious 
night-signals already described first appear, and are 
then transmitted to various parts of the country. 

In another letter the grave danger of allowing 
foreign servants to be employed at various hotels at 
Plymouth is pointed out, and it is asked whether 
certain houses in that city are not hot-beds of 
German intrigue. Now with regard to this aspect 
of affairs Mr. McKenna, answering Mr. Fell in 
Parliament on March 10th, said he had no power to 
impose conditions on the employment of waiters, 
British or alien, and so the suggested notice outside 
hotels employing aliens was not accepted. 

From Tunbridge Wells two serious cases of sus- 
picion are reported, and near Tenterden, in Kent, 
there undoubtedly lives one of our " friends " the 
night-signallers, while in a certain village in Sussex 
the husband of the sub-postmistress is a German, 
whose father, a tradesman in a neighbouring town, 
I hear, often freely ventilates his patriotism to his 
Fatherland. 

That the " pirate " submarines are receiving 
petrol in secret is an undoubted fact. At Swansea 
recently a vessel bound for Havre was found to 
have taken on board as part of her stores 400 gallons 
of petrol. She was not a motor-boat, and the 



THE PERIL OF DELUDING THE PUBLIC 127 

Customs authorities were very properly suspicious, 
but the captain insisted that the petrol was wanted 
as stores, and that there were no means by which 
we could prevent that petrol going. Where did it 
go to ? There were boats no doubt in the neighbour- 
hood which wanted petrol. They were enemy 
submarines ! 

Of isolated reports of espionage, and of the work of 
Germany's secret agents, dozens lie before me, many 
of which certainly call for strictest investigation. 
But who will do this work if the " authorities " so 
steadily refuse, in order to bamboozle the public, to 
perform their duty ? 

Some of these reports are accompanied by maps 
and plans. One is from a well-known solicitor, who 
is trustee for an estate in Essex where, adjoining, 
several men a month or so ago purchased a small 
holding consisting of a homestead and a single acre of 
land. They asserted that they had come from 
Canada, and having dug up the single acre in ques- 
tion for the purpose of growing potatoes, as they say, 
they are now living together, their movements being 
highly suspicious. On more than one occasion 
mysterious explosions have been heard within the 
house — which is a lonely one, and a long way from 
any other habitation. 

The wife of a well-known Scotch Earl who has 
been diligent in making various inquiries into sus- 
picious cases in Scotland, and has endeavoured to 
stir up the authorities to confirm the result of her 
observations, has written to me in despair. She has 
done her best, alas ! without avail. 

And again, in yet another case, the widow of an 
English Earl, whose name is as a household word, 
has written to me reporting various matters which 
have come to her notice and deploring that no heed 



128 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

has been taken of her statements by the supine 
" powers- that-be." 

Beside this pile of grave reports upon my table, I 
have opened a big file of reports of cases of espionage 
which reached me during the year 1909. In the 
light of events to-day they are, indeed, astounding. 

Here is one, the name and address of my corre- 
spondent I do not here print, but it is at the disposal 
of the authorities. He says : 

" Staying recently at North Queensferry I made 
the acquaintance of a young German, who was there, 
he informed me, for quiet and health reasons. He was 
a man of rather taciturn and what I put down to 
eccentric disposition, for he spoke very little, and, 
from the time he went away in the morning early, 
he never put in an appearance until dusk. One day, 
as was my wont, I was sitting in the front garden 
when I noticed a fair-sized red morocco notebook 
lying on the grass. I picked it up, and on my open- 
ing it up, what was my surprise and amazement to 
find that it was full to overflowing with sketches and 
multitudinous information regarding the Firth of 
Forth. All the small bays, buoys, etc., together with 
depth of water at the various harbour entrances at 
high and low tide, were admirably set out. I also 
found, neatly folded up, a letter addressed to my 
friend which had contained an enclosure of money 
from the German Government. I hesitated no longer, 
for I sent notebook, etc., to the authorities at Lon- 
don. Three days after I had sent the letter off, a 
stranger called to see my friend the German. They 
both left together, and I have never heard any more 
about it since. The German's trunk still lies at North 
Queensferry awaiting its owner's return." 

The following reached me on March 11th: 
" I note what you mention regarding Wey bourne 



THE PERIL OF DELUDING THE PUBLIC 129 

in Norfolk, and would trespass on your time to relate 
an occurrence which took place about the autumn of 
1908, when I was living at Overstrand. I had walked 
over to Weybourne and was about to return by train 
when two men, dressed more or less as tramps, 
entered the station to take their tickets ; they were 
followed by a tall, handsome man, unmistakably a 
German officer, who spoke to them, looked at their 
tickets and walked straight up the platform. The 
men sat down on a bench to wait for the train, and 
I took a seat near them with a view to overhearing 
their conversation. It appeared to be in German 
dialect and little intelligible. The officer, meanwhile, 
who had reached the end of the platform, turned 
round and, quickening his steps, came and placed 
himself directly in front of us : the men at once were 
silent, and the officer remained where he was, casting 
many scowls in my direction. On the following day 
I met him, on this occasion alone, on the pathway 
leading from the ' Garden of Sleep ' to Overstrand. 
He recognised me at once, scowled once again, and 
passed on to the Overstrand Hotel. I mentioned 
the subject to a gentleman resident in Overstrand, 
who asked me to write an account of the matter to 
be placed before the War Office, but I believe that 
my friend forgot to forward the paper. A retired 
officer in Cromer informed me that the German 
officer in question was well known as the head of the 
German spies in the neighbourhood. Some questions 
happened to be asked in the House of Commons that 
very week as to the existence of spies in Norfolk. 
The Home Secretary, the present Lord Gladstone, I 
think, replied to these in the manner which might be 
expected of him. 

" From the first I recognised the fact that the men 
were spies. I imagined that they had been surveying, 
at Weybourne, but in the light of recent events I 
think a gun emplacement or a petrol store may have 
been their ' objective.' The two men were rather 



130 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

undersized, badly dressed, and more or less covered 
with mud, probably mechanics. One I remember had 
extraordinary teeth, about the size of the thickness 
of one's little finger. The officer, as I have said, was 
a fine man, broad and well-proportioned, from thirty 
to forty years of age. Oddly enough I thought that 
I recognised him recently on a cinematograph film 
depicting the staff of the German Emperor. I left 
the neighbourhood not long after, otherwise I should 
certainly have made further investigations, con- 
vinced as I was of the shady nature of these indi- 
viduals. The officer, I am sure, recognised that I 
was a detective." 

Another report is from a steward on a liner, who 
writes : 

" At the Queen's Hotel, at Leith, one day I over- 
heard these words from a man speaking in German. 
' What's this ! Your Highness's servants — when did 
they come North ? ' Now one of these I have met 
several times. I have travelled with him from 
Antwerp, and I was in his company between Leith 
and London. He was of a cheerful disposition, and 
played the violin well, but would not allow any one 
to go into his cabin, not even the steward ! One 
day, while he was playing to the passengers on the 
promenade deck, and the sailors were washing down 
the poop deck, I had to go into his berth to shut 
his port-hole ; to my surprise I found that he had 
been working out the draft of a plan, and was mark- 
ing in the coast defence stations, and all the informa- 
tion he had obtained from the ship's officers and 
passengers. There were also various other drawings 
of the Forth and other bridges, and plans of the sea 
coast from the Firth of Forth to Yarmouth, while 
in his box were all kinds of mathematical instruments, 
together with some envelopes addressed to Count 
von X. [the name is given] of Bremen. He told me 
that he was going to London for a year's engagement 



THE PERIL OF DELUDING THE PUBLIC 131 

at a music hall, yet, strangely enough, two weeks 
later I found this same German on the Carron Com- 
pany's steamer Avon bound for Grangemouth. For 
some time I lost all trace of him, but last October I 
met the same German at the new Dock at Kirkcaldy, 
posing as a photographer. At that time the name 
on his bag was H. Shindler. We had a drink to 
gether, but, on my asking why he had changed his 
profession, he laughed mysteriously, and admitted 
that he had made a long tour of England and Wales, 
taking many interesting pictures. Each time I met 
him he had considerably altered his appearance, and 
the last I saw of him was when I saw him into the 
train on his way to Dunfermline." 

Yet another I pick out at haphazard. It is from 
an actor whose name is well known, and is, as are all 
the others, at the disposal of any official inquirers. 
He writes to me : 

" I was engaged to play in the ' panto ' of ' Sinbad 
the Sailor.' W T e were to rehearse and play a week at 
the ' Prince's Theatre,' Llandudno. I was in the 
habit of visiting a certain barber's shop, and was 
always attended to by a German assistant. He 
seemed a man of about forty years of age, and his 

name was K [the actual name is given]. On the 

first Saturday of my sojourn in the place I called at 
the shop, along with another member of our company. 
When about to leave, my ' pal ' and myself were 
rather startled by the ' attendant ' inviting the two 
of us to come for a drive on the following day, Sunday. 
Naturally we accepted the invitation, at the same 
time thinking it rather strange that a man earning 
say 30s. a week could afford such a luxury as a drive. 
At noon, next day, my friend and I turned up at 
the rendezvous, and sure enough our friend was 
there with a landau and pair. This was certainly 
doing the ' big thing,' but more was to follow. 



132 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

" We drove to Conway, stabled there, and then 
went for a stroll round the picturesque old castle. 
Our friend then proposed that we adjourn for some- 
thing to eat, so, as our appetites were a bit keen by 
this time, we went to the ' White Hart Hotel.' Here 
another surprise awaited us, for dinner was all set 
and ready. And what a dinner ! My ' pal ' and I 
had visions of a huge bill, but on our friend squaring 
the amount we sat in open-mouthed surprise. 

" By this time we were anxious to know a little about 
our ' host,' but not until he had had a few brandy- 
and-sodas did he tell us much. He then said he 
had some estates in Germany, and ultimately con- 
fessed (in strict confidence) that he held an important 
Government appointment. After a few hours in 
Conway we drove back to Llandudno, and as our 
friend of the ' soap and brush ' was in a hilarious 
mood, nothing would do but that we drive to his 
rooms. And what rooms ! Fit for a prince ! We 
had a splendid supper followed by wine and cigars. 
He then proceeded to show my friend and me a great 
number of photographs (all taken by himself, he ex- 
plained) of all the coast mountains and roads for 
many miles around Llandudno. It was not till we 
mentioned the affair to some gentlemen in Llan- 
dudno that we were informed that our barber friend 
was, in all probability, a spy in the pay of the German 
Government ! " 

Here is another, from a correspondent at Glasgow : 

" Down by the shipping, along the Clydeside, are 
many barbers' shops, etc., owned by foreigners, and 
in one of these I think I have spotted an individual 
whose movements and behaviour entitle me to 
regard him as a spy. The party in question is a 
German of middle age, a man of remarkably refined 
appearance — in fact, not the class of man that one 
would ordinarily associate with a barber's shop. 
One has but to engage him in conversation to dis- 



THE PERIL OF DELUDING THE PUBLIC 133 

cover that he is no stupid foreigner, but a man very 
much up to date as regards our methods and things 
happening in this country. Our language, too, he 
speaks like a native, and, were it not for his markedly 
Teutonic features, he might pass for one of ourselves. 

" What excited my suspicions first regarding this 
personage was the fact that he was continually quizz- 
ing and putting to me questions regarding my em- 
ployment of a decidedly delicate nature, and con- 
versing freely on subjects about which I thought 
few people knew anything. I also noticed, when 
in his shop, that he was most lavish in his remarks 
to customers, especially to young engineers and 
draughtsmen who came to him from the neighbouring 
shipbuilding yards, leading them on to talk about 
matters concerning the Navy and shipbuilding ; their 
work in the various engineering shops and drawing 
offices ; and the time likely to be taken to complete 
this or that gunboat, etc. Indeed, with some of these 
young engineers and draughtsmen I have not failed 
to notice that he is particularly ' chummy,' and I 
also know, for a fact, that on several occasions he 
has been ' up town ' with them, visiting music halls 
and theatres, and that they have spent many even- 
ings together. On these occasions no doubt, under 
the influence of liquor, many confidences will have 
been exchanged, and many ' secrets ' regarding work 
and methods indiscreetly revealed. 

" But so much for the above. On surmise alone 
my conclusions regarding this man might have been 
entirely wrong, but for the fact that I, one evening, 
met with a former employee of his, also a German, 
in another barber's shop in the city. This youngster, 
evidently nursing a grievance against his late em 
ployer for something or other, was quick to unburden 
himself to me regarding him, and gave me the follow- 
ing particulars. He said that his late master was 
not what he appeared to be, and that his barbering 
was all a blind to cover something else ; in fact 



134 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

(and this he hinted pretty broadly) that his presence 
over here in this country was for no good. He 
further said that he was still a member of the German 
Army (although in appearance he looks to be long 
past military service), and that regularly money was 
sent to him from Berlin ; that he was an agent for 
the bringing in to this country of crowds of young 
Germans, male and female, who came over here to 
learn our language and study our methods ; that 
his shop was the rendezvous for certain members of 
his own nationality, who met there periodically at 
night for some secret purpose which he had never 
been able to fathom ; that he was often away from 
the shop for weeks at a time, no one knew where, 
the business in his absence then being looked after 
by a brother. In addition to the above, I may say 
that the walls of his shop are positively crowded with 
pictures of such celebrities as Lord Roberts, Lord 
Kitchener, General French, etc., etc., the face of 
the Kaiser being a noticeable absentee, doubtless on 
purpose. He likes you, too, to believe in his affection 
for this country, which he openly parades, although 
I am told that in private he sneers at us, at our 
soldiers and people. From the above, I think I have 
established my case against this wily Teuton, who, 
while masquerading as a barber, is yet ail the time 
here for a totally different purpose, i.e. to spy upon 
us." 

How a German secret agent altered a British 
military message is told by another of my corre- 
spondents, who says : 

" The time of the incident was during the visit 
of the Kaiser to the Earl of Lonsdale at Lowther 
Castle. I was employed at an hotel in Keswick, 
and my duties were to look after a billiard-room. 
Among my customers was a foreign gentleman, who 
was always rather inquisitive if any military matter 



THE PERIL OF DELUDING THE PUBLIC 135 

was under discussion, and our many chats brought 
us on very friendly terms. Well, about the last week 
of the Emperor's visit, the Earl of Lonsdale arranged 
a drive for the Emperor and the house-party for the 
purpose of letting them see the English Lake Dis- 
trict. The route lay via Patterdale, Windermere, 
Thirlmere, then on to Keswick, from there by train 
to Penrith, and again drive the three or four miles 
back to Lowther Castle. 

" It must be remembered that, the Emperor's visit 
being a private one, military displays would be out 
of place, but on the day of the above-mentioned drive 
a telegram was received from the officer in command 
of the Penrith Volunteers asking if permission could 
be granted for the volunteers to mount a guard of 
honour at the station on the arrival of the Emperor's 
train at Penrith. Now, as I was going up home to 
the ' Forge ' I met my father coming to Keswick, 
and as he seemed out of wind, I undertook to take 
his message, which was the reply to the above ' wire.' 
The text of the answer only contained two words, 
which were to the point : Certainly not,' and signed 
by the commanding officer at headquarters. When 
I got within half a mile of Keswick I was overtaken 
by my foreign acquaintance, who was on a bicycle, 
and on his asking me why I was hurrying, I told 
him I had a rather urgent ' wire ' to send. He 
kindly undertook to have it despatched, as he was 
passing the Post Office, and I unsuspectingly con- 
sented. On the arrival of the royal train at Penrith 
you may judge the surprise and disgust of the officers, 
some of whom had in private travelled in the royal 
train, to see the volunteers lining the station approach ! 
Inquiries were made — the post office authorities 
produced the telegram, as handed in, with the word 
' not ' carefully erased, making the message mean 
the opposite. I never from that day saw my foreign 
friend again, but many times have wondered was 
it one of the Kaiser's wishes to see if his agents could 



136 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PEEIL 

play a trick on the volunteers for his own eyes 
to see ! " 

Here is a curious story of a German commercial 
spy, the writer of which gives me his bona fides. 
He writes : 

"In a glucose factory where I worked, the head 
of the firm had a bookkeeper who went wrong. If 
that bookkeeper had never gone wrong, we should 
never have known of the German who worked hard 
in England for a whole year for nothing. One day 
the head — I'll call him Mr. Brown for short — re- 
ceived a letter from a young German saying that he 
would like to represent the glucose manufacturer 
among the merchants of this country, whose trade, 
he said, he could secure. He said he would be will- 
ing to postpone the consideration of salary pending 
the result of his services. Well, Brown turned the 
German over to the bookkeeper, who found that the 
German had splendid credentials from his own 
country. So Brown told the bookkeeper to engage 
the German, and pay him £40 a month to start. At 
the end of six months the German's service had 
proved so satisfactory that Brown told his book- 
keeper to pay the German £50 a month till further 
notice ; and three months later the salary was again 
raised by Brown to £60. Along about the time the 
German's year was up, he suddenly disappeared. 
That is, he failed one morning to put in an appear- 
ance at the office at the usual time. Brown noticed 
that morning that his bookkeeper, who was also 
cashier, was extremely absent-minded and looked 
altogether unhappy. ' What's the matter with you ? ' 
said Brown, addressing the bookkeeper. ' This is 
the matter,' was the reply, and thereupon the book- 
keeping cashier laid before his employer a cheque 
for hundreds of pounds. It was made payable to 
the order of the absent German, and was signed with 



THE PEEIL OF DELUDING THE PUBLIC 137 

the personal signature of the bookkeeper. * What's 
this mean ? ' asked Brown. ' It means/ said the 
wild-eyed bookkeeper, ' that I have never paid that 
German his salary — not one penny in all the time 
he has been here. He never asked for money, always 
had plenty, so I pocketed from month to month the 
money due to him. But it's killing me. I didn't need 
to do it. I just couldn't resist the temptation. I had 
money of my own, and knew I could pay him any 
time. Yesterday when you said that I must again raise 
his salary I realised for the first time the enormity of 
the thing I was doing. I resolved to tell the German 
the whole story this morning, and give him his money 
in full. This is the cheque for the money I have 
stolen from him. I have money in the bank to 
meet it. I want him to have it, I don't care what 
follows.' Brown, gazing spellbound at his clerk, 
said : * But I don't understand. Did the German 
never ask for his salary ? ' ' No,' replied the book- 
keeper. { He always had money ; he seemed only 
to want the situation — to be connected with this 
house ; he has some mysterious influence over the 
German trade in this country.' A weather-beaten 
man in a sea- jacket an hour or two later uncere- 
moniously shuffled into the office. He handed 
Brown a note, who read it aloud : ' I am aboard ship 
by this time,' the letter said, ' bound for my country. 
Receive my sincere regrets at the abrupt termination 
of our pleasant relations. Through connection with 
your firm, I have found out the secret of glucose- 
making, and am going back to impart it to the firm 
which I belong to in Germany, You owe me nothing. " 

These few cases I print here because I think it 
but right to show that both before the war, and 
since, the public have not been so utterly blinded 
to the truth as the authorities had hoped. 

Many of the other cases before me are of such 
a character that I do not propose to reveal them 

5* 



138 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

to the public, still hoping against hope that proper 
inquiry may be instituted by a reliable Board 
formed to deal with the whole matter. And, for 
obvious reasons, premature mention of them might 
defeat the ends of justice by warning the spies that 
their " game " is known. 

I here maintain that there is a peril — a very grave 
and imminent peril — in attempting to further de- 
lude the public, and, by so doing, further influence 
public opinion. 

The seed of distrust in the Government has, alas ! 
been sown in the public mind, and each day, as 
the alien question is evaded, it takes a firmer and 
firmer root. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE PERIL OF INVASION 

There are few questions upon which experts differ 
more profoundly than that of a possible invasion 
of this country by Germans. 

Here, in England, opinion may be roughly 
divided into two schools. It is understood gener- 
ally that the naval authorities assert that the 
position of our Fleet is such that even a raid by 
say ten thousand men, resolved to do us the 
greatest possible damage and cause the maximum 
of alarm even if the penalty be annihilation, is out 
of the question. On the other hand, the military 
authorities hold the view — a view expressed to 
me by the late Lord Roberts — that it would be 
quite possible for the Germans to land a force in 
Great Britain which would do an enormous amount 
of damage, physically and morally, before it was 
finally rounded up and destroyed by the over- 
whelming numbers of troops we could fling against it. 

What we think of the matter, however, is of 
less importance than what the enemy thinks, and 
it is beyond question that, at any rate until quite 
recently, the German War Staff regarded the 
invasion of England as perfectly practicable, and 
had made elaborate plans for carrying out their 
project. 

139 



140 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

When writing my forecast " The Invasion of 
England," in 1905, I received the greatest advice 
and kind assistance from the late Lord Roberts, 
who spent many hours with me, and who personally 
revised and elaborated the German plan of cam- 
paign which I had supposed. Without his assis- 
tance the book would never have been written. I 
am aware of the strong views he held on the sub- 
ject, and how indefatigable he was in endeavouring 
to bring the grave peril of invasion home to an 
apathetic nation. Poor " Bobs " ! The public 
laughed at him and said i " Yes, of course. He is 
getting so old ! " 

Old ! When I came home from the last Balkan 
War I brought him some souvenirs from the battle- 
fields of Macedonia, and he sent me a telegram to 
meet him at 8 a.m. at a quiet West End hotel — 
where he was in the habit of staying. I arrived 
at that hour and he grasped my hand, welcomed 
me back from many months of a winter campaign 
with the Servian headquarters staff, and, erect and 
smiling, said : " Now, let's talk. I've already 
done my correspondence and had my breakfast. I 
was up at half-past five," — when I had been snor- 
ing ! 

Roberts was a soldier of the old school. He knew 
our national weakness, and he knew our stubborn 
stone-wall resistance. After the outbreak of war 
he told me that he would deplore racing, football, 
and cricket — our national sports — while we were 
at death-grips with Germany, because, as he put 
it, if we race and play games, the people will not 
take this world-war seriously. Then he turned in 
his chair in my room, and, looking me straight in 
the face, said : " What did I tell you, Le Queux, 
when you were forecasting ' The Invasion ' — that 



THE PERIL OF INVASION 141 

the British nation will not be awakened by us — 
but only by a war upon them. They are at last 
awakened. I will never seek to recall the past, 
but my duty is to do my best for my King and my 
Country." 

And so he died — cut off at a moment when he 
was claiming old friendship of those from India 
whom he knew so well. The night before he left 
England to go upon the journey to the front which 
proved fatal, he wrote me a letter — which I still 
preserve — deploring the atrocities which the Ger- 
mans had committed in Belgium. 

Ever since the war broke out we have heard of 
great concentration of troops, and ships intended 
to carry them, at Wilhelnishaven and Cuxhaven, a 
strong indication that something in the nature of 
a raid was in contemplation. It is quite possible 
that opinion, both in Germany and in this country, 
has been very profoundly modified by the fate which 
befell the last baby-killing expedition launched 
against our eastern coasts, which came to grief 
through the vigilance of Admiral Beatty. The 
terrible mauling sustained by the German squadron, 
the loss of the Blucher and the battering of the 
Seydlitz and Derfflinger, may have done a good deal 
to drive home into the German mind the conviction 
that in the face of an unbeaten — and to Germany 
unbeatable — battle-fleet, the invasion of England 
would be, at the very best, an undertaking of the 
most hazardous nature which would be foredoomed 
to failure and in which the penalty would be 
annihilation. 

Perhaps, however, the enemy are only waiting. 
We know from German writings that the plans for 
the invasion of England have usually postulated 
that our Fleet shall be, for the time being, absent 



142 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

from the point of danger, probably out of home 
waters altogether, and that the attack would be 
sprung upon us as a surprise. We do not know, 
and we do not seek to know, the exact position of 
the British Fleet, but we can be perfectly certain 
that, with the invention of wireless, the moment 
at which the Germans might have sprung a surprise 
upon us has gone for ever. There is good reason 
for believing that the Germans intended to strike 
at us without any formal declaration of war, and 
I have been informed, on good authority, that 
before war broke out, certain dispositions had 
actually been made which were brought to naught 
only by a singularly bold and daring manoeuvre 
on the part of our naval authorities. No doubt, in 
the course of time, this incident, with many others 
of a similar nature, will be made public. I can only 
say at present that when the startling truth becomes 
known, further evidence will be forthcoming that 
Germany deliberately planned the war, and was 
ready to strike long before war was declared. 

People who say that an invasion of our shores 
is impossible usually do so with the reservation, 
expressed or implied, that the effort would be unsuc- 
cessful — that is, that it could not succeed so far 
as to compel Britain to make peace. But, even if 
the Germans believe this as firmly as we do, it by 
no means follows that they may not make the 
attempt. 

It is a part of the Germans' theory and practice 
to seek, by every possible means, to create a panic, 
to do the utmost moral and material damage by 
the most inhuman and revolting means, and it is 
more than likely that they would hold the loss of 
even fifty or sixty thousand men as cheap indeed, 
if, before they were destroyed, they could, if only 



THE PERIL OF INVASION 143 

for a few days, vent German wrath and hatred on 
British towns and on British people. 

To say they could not do this would be exceedingly 
foolish. Few people would be daring enough to say 
that it would be impossible for the Germans, aided 
undoubtedly by spies on shore, to land suddenly in 
the neighbourhood of one of the big East Coast 
towns a force strong enough to overpower, for the 
moment, the local defences, and establish itself — if 
only for a few days — in a position where it could 
lay waste with fire and sword a very considerable 
section of country. And we must never forget that, 
if ever the Germans get the chance, their atrocious 
treatment of the British population will be a thou- 
sand times worse than anything they have done in 
France and Belgium. That fact ought to sink deeply 
into the public mind. A German Expedition into 
this country would be undertaken with the one 
definite object of striking terror and producing a 
panic which would force our Government to sue 
for peace. To secure that end, the Germans would 
spare neither young nor old — every man, woman, 
and child within their power would be slaughtered 
without mercy, and without regard for age or sex. 
We have heard something, though not all, of the 
infamies perpetrated by German troops upon the 
helpless Belgians even before the world had realised 
how much Belgium had done to foil their plans. 
And we must not overlook the fact that certain 
German officers — enjoying the services of valets and 
other luxuries at Donington Hall, fitted up by us at a 
cost of £13,000 — were those who ordered the whole- 
sale massacre of women and children. We relieve 
the poor Belgian refugees, and caress their mur- 
derers. 
If the flood-gates of German hatred were opened 



144 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

upon us, what measure would the enemy mete out 
to us who, as they now bitterly realise, have stood 
between the Kaiser and his megalomaniac dreams ? 
I do not think we need be in any doubt as to what 
the German answer to that question would be ! 

Recent events have made it vividly apparent 
that the Germans have already reached a pitch of 
desperation in which they are willing to try any and 
every scheme which, at whatever cost to themselves, 
offered a prospect of injuring their enemies. They 
feel the steel net slowly, but very surely, tightening 
around them ; like caged wild beasts they are flinging 
themselves frantically at the bars, now here, now 
there, in mad paroxysms of rage. Their wonderful 
military machine, if it has not absolutely broken 
down, is at any rate badly out of gear, though there 
is a huge strength still left in it. Their vaunted 
fleet skulks behind fortifications, and whenever it 
ventures to poke its head outside is hit promptly 
and hit hard. Their boasted Zeppelins, which were 
to lay ever so many " eggs " on London, have cer- 
tainly, up to the time of writing, failed utterly. 

We frequently hear the man-in-the-street jeer at 
the Zeppelin peril, and declare that it is only a 
" bogey " raised to frighten us. To a certain extent 
I think it is, but the fact that Zeppelins have not 
yet appeared over London is, surely, no reason why 
they should not come and commit havoc and cause 
panic as the vanguard of the raid which may be 
intended upon us. There is much in our apathy 
which is more than foolish — it is criminal. Had the 
country, ten years ago, listened to the warnings of 
Lord Roberts and others, instead of being immersed 
in their own pleasure-seeking and money-grubbing, 
we should have had no war. The public, who are 
happily to-day filled with a spirit of patriotism 



THE PERIL OP INVASION 145 

because they have learnt wisdom by experience, 
now realise their error. They see how utterly foolish 
they were to jeer at my warnings in the Daily Mail ; 
and by singing in the music halls " Are we Down- 
'earted — No ! " they have gallantly admitted it — 
as every Britisher admits where he is wrong — and 
have come forward to stem the tide of barbarians 
who threaten us. 

As one who has done all that mortal man can do 
to try to bring home to his country a sense of its 
own danger, and who, by the insidious action of 
" those in power," narrowly escaped financial ruin 
for daring to be a patriot, I cast the past aside and 
rejoice in the fine spirit of the younger generation 
of men, actuated by the fact that they are stiD 
Britons. 

But, after this war, there will be men — men whose 
names are to-day as household words — who must be 
indicted before the nation for leading us into the 
trap which Germany so cunningly prepared for us. 
Those are men who knew, by the Kaiser's declaration 
in 1908, what was intended, and while posing as 
British statesmen — save the mark ! — lied to the 
public, and told them that Germany was our best 
friend, and that war would never be declared — " not 
in our time." 

There will be a day, ere long, when the pro-German 
section of what Britons foolishly call their " rulers " 
— certain members of that administration who are 
now struggling to atone for their past follies in being 
misled by the cunning of the enemy — will be ar- 
raigned and swept out of the public ken. as they 
deserve to be. The blood of a million mothers of 
sons iu Great Britain boils at thoughts of the ghastly 
truth, and the wholesale sacrifice of their dear ones, 
because the diplomacy of Great Britain, with all 



146 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

its tinsel, its paraphernalia of attaches, secretaries 
(first, second, and third), its entertainments, its 
fine " residences," its whisperings and jugglings, and 
its " conversations," was quite incapable of thwart- 
ing the German plot. 

By our own short-sightedness we have been led 
into this conflict, in which the very lives of our dear 
ones and ourselves are at stake. Yet, to-day, we 
in England have not fully realised that we are at 
war. Illustrated papers publish fashion numbers, 
and the butterflies of the fair sex rush to adorn 
themselves in the latest mode from Paris — the capital 
of a threatened nation ! Stroll at any hour in any 
street in London, or any of our big cities. Does 
anything remind the thoughtful man that we are 
at war ? No. Our theatres, music halls, and pic- 
ture palaces are full. Our restaurants are crowded, 
our night-clubs drive a thriving trade — and nobody 
cares for to-morrow. 

Why ? Read the daily newspapers, and learn the 
lesson of how the public are being daily deluded by 
false assertions that all is well, and that we have 
great Imperial Germany — the country which has, 
for twenty years, plotted against us — in the hollow 
of our hand. 

The public are not told the real truth, and there 
lies the grave scandal which must be apparent to 
every person in the country. But, I ask, will the 
malevolent influence which is protecting the alien 
enemy among us, and refusing to allow inquiry into 
spying, ever permit the truth to be told ? 

Let the reader pause, and think. 

Despite the cast-iron censorship, and the most 
docile Press the world has ever seen, the German 
people must, on the other hand, to-day be suspecting 
the truth. Germans may be braggarts, but they 



THE PERIL OF INVASION 147 

are not fools, and it is safe to say that the hysterical 
spasms of hatred of Great Britain — by which the 
entire nation seems to be convulsed — have their 
origin in an ever-growing conviction of failure 
and a very accurate perception of where that failure 
lies. 

In this frame of mind they may venture on any- 
thing, and it is for this reason that I believe they 
may yet, in spite of all that has happened, attempt 
a desperate raid on these shores. 

What are we doing to meet that peril ? 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PERIL OF APATHY 

There is an apathy towards any peril of invasion 
that is astounding. 

Of our military measures, pure and simple, I shall 
say nothing except that it is the bounden duty of 
every Briton to place implicit reliance upon Lord 
Kitchener and the military authorities and, if neces- 
sary, to assist them by every means in his power. 
We can do no good by criticising measures of the 
true meaning of which we know nothing. 

There are some other points, however, on which 
silence would be culpable, and one of these is the 
amazing lack of any clear instructions as to the 
duties of the civil population in the event of a 
German attack. 

Now it is perfectly obvious that one of the first 
things necessary in the face of a German landing 
would be to get the civilian population safely beyond 
the zones threatened by the invaders. It is simply 
unthinkable that men, women, and children shall be 
left to the tender mercies of the German hordes. 
Yet, so far as I am able to ascertain, no steps have 
yet been taken to warn inhabitants at threatened 
points what they shall do. They have been advised, 
it is true, to continue in their customary avocations 
and to remain quietly at home. Does any sane 
human being, remembering the treatment of Belgian 

148 






THE PERIL OF APATHY 149 

civilians who just did this, expect that such advice 
will be followed ? We can take it for granted that 
it will not, and I contend that in all districts along 
the East Coast, where, it is practically certain, any 
attempt at landing must be made, the inhabitants 
should at once be told, in the clearest and most 
emphatic manner, just what is required of them, 
and the best and quickest way to get out of harm's 
way, leaving as little behind them as possible to be 
of any use to the invaders, and leaving a clear field 
of operations for our own troops. 

A century ago, when the peril of a French invasion 
overshadowed the land, the most careful arrange- 
ments were made for removing the people from the 
threatened areas, and the destruction of food and 
fodder. Is there any reason why such arrangements 
should not be taken in hand to-day, and the people 
made thoroughly familiar with all the conditions 
necessary for carrying out a swift and systematic 
evacuation ? 

I am aware, of course, that already certain in- 
structions have been issued to Lord-lieutenants of 
the various counties in what may be called the zone 
of possible invasion. But I contend that the public 
at large should be told plainly what is expected of 
them. It is not enough to say that when the mo- 
ment of danger comes they should blindly obey the 
local policeman. In the event of a withdrawal from 
any part of the coast-line becoming necessary, it 
ought not to be possible that the inhabitants should 
be taken by surprise ; their course ought to be 
mapped out for them quite clearly, and in advance, 
so that all will know just what they have to do to 
get away with the minimum of delay and without 
impeding the movements of our defensive forces. 
Whatever we may say or do, the appearance off the 



150 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

British coast of a raiding German force would be the 
signal for a rush inland, and there is every reason to 
take steps for ensuring that that rush shall be orderly 
and controlled, and in no sense a blind and panic 
flight which would be alike unnecessary and disas- 
trous. It may well be, and it is to be hoped, that 
the danger will never come. That does not absolve 
us from the necessity of being ready to meet it. 
War is an affair of surprises, and Germany has 
sprung many surprises upon the world since last 
August. 

The refusal of the War Office authorities to ex- 
tend any sympathetic consideration towards the 
new Civilian Corps, which are striving, despite 
official discouragement, to fit themselves for the duty 
of home defence in case the necessity should arise, 
is another instance of the lack of imagination and 
insight which has shown itself in so many ways 
during our conduct of the campaign. These Corps 
now number well over a million men. All that 
the Army Council has done for them is to extend 
to such of them as became affiliated to the Central 
Volunteer Training Association the favour of official 
" recognition " which will entitle them to rank as 
combatants in the event of invasion. Even that 
recognition is coupled with a condition that has 
given the gravest offence and which threatens, 
indeed, to go far towards paralysing the movement 
altogether. 

It is in the highest degree important, as will 
readily be admitted, that these Corps should not 
interfere with recruiting for the Regular Army. 
That the Volunteers themselves fully recognise. 
But to secure this non-interference the Government 
have made it a condition of recognition that any 
man under military age joining a Corps shall sign 



THE PERIL OF APATHY 151 

a declaration that he will enlist in the Regular Army 
when called upon unless he can show some good and 
sufficient reason why he should not do so. 

Here we have the cause of all the trouble. The 
Army Council, in spite of all entreaties, obstinately 
refuses to state what constitutes a good and sufficient 
reason for non-enlistment. One such reason, it is 
admitted, is work on Government contracts. But 
it is impossible for us to shut our eyes to the fact that 
there are many thousands of men of military age and 
good physique who, however much they may desire 
to do their duty, are fully absolved by family or 
business reasons from the duty of joining the Regular 
Army. Many of them have dependents whom it is 
simply impossible for them to leave to the blank 
poverty of the official separation allowance ; many 
of them are in businesses which would go to rack and 
ruin in their absence ; many of them are engaged on 
work which is quite as important to the country as 
anything they could do in the field, even though they 
may not be in Government employ. To withdraw 
every able-bodied man from his employment would 
simply mean that industry would be brought to a 
standstill, and as this country must, to some extent, 
act as general provider for the Allies, it is, plainly, 
our duty to keep business going as well as to fight. 

Rightly or wrongly, this particular provision is 
looked upon as an attempt to introduce a veiled 
form of compulsion. It has been pointed out that 
there is no power to compel men to enlist, even if 
they have signed such a declaration as is required. 
But the men, very properly, say that Britain has 
gone to war in defence of her plighted word, and 
that they are not prepared to give their word and 
then break it. 

What is the result % Many thousands of capable 



152 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

men, fully excused by their own consciences from 
the duty of joining the Regular Army, find that, 
unless they are prepared to take up a false and 
wholly untenable position, they are not even allowed 
to train for the defence of their country in such a 
grave crisis that all other considerations but the 
safety of the Empire must go by the board. I am 
not writing of the slackers who want to " swank 
about in uniform " at home when they ought to 
be doing their duty in the trenches. I refer to the 
very large body of genuinely patriotic men who, 
honestly and sincerely, feel that, whatever their 
personal wishes may be, their duty at the moment 
is to " keep things going " at home. For men 
over military age the Volunteer Corps offer an 
opportunity of getting ready to strike a blow for 
England's sake should the time ever come when 
every man who can shoulder a rifle must take his 
place in the ranks. And it certainly argues an 
amazing want of sympathy and foresight that, for 
the lack of a few words of intelligible definition, a 
splendid body of men should lose the only chance 
offered them of getting a measure of military edu- 
cation which in time to come may be of priceless 
value. 

No one complains that the Army Council does not 
immediately rush to arm and equip the Volunteers. 
Undoubtedly, there is still much to be done in the 
way of equipping the regular troops and accumu- 
lating the vast reserves that will be required when 
the great forward move begins. Much could be 
done even now, however, to encourage the Volun- 
teers to persevere with their training. It should not 
be beyond the power of the military authorities, in 
the very near future, to arm and equip such of 
the Corps as have attained a reasonable measure of 



THE PERIL OF APATHY 153 

efficiency in simple military movements, and in 
shooting with the miniature rifle. At the same 
time some clear definition ought to be forthcoming 
of what, in the opinion of the Army Council, consti- 
tutes a valid reason, in the case of a man of military 
age, for not joining the regular forces. It is certain 
that when the time comes for the Allies to take a 
strong offensive we shall be sending enormous num- 
bers of trained men out of the country, and, the 
wastage of war being what it is, huge drafts will be 
constantly required to keep the fighting units up to 
full strength. In the meantime large numbers of 
Territorials in this country are chained to the irk- 
some — though very necessary — duty of guarding 
railways, bridges, and other important points liable 
to be attacked. There seems to be no good reason 
why a great deal, if not the whole, of this work should 
not be undertaken by Volunteers. This would free 
great numbers of Territorials for more profitable 
forms of training and would, undoubtedly, enable 
us to send far more men out of the country if the 
necessity should arise. 

If the Volunteers were regarded by those in 
authority with the proper sympathy which their 
patriotism deserves, it would be seen that they pro- 
vide, in effect, a class of troops closely correspond- 
ing to the German Landsturm, which is already 
taking its part in the war. It is important to 
remember that, up to the present time, we have 
enlisted none but picked men, every one of whom 
has had to pass a itrict medical and physical 
examination. We have left untouched, in fact, our 
real reserves. Those reserves, apparently scorned by 
the official authorities, are capable, if they receive 
adequate encouragement, of providing an immense 
addition to our fighting forces. 



154 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PEEIL 

No one pretends, of course, that the entire body 
of Volunteers whom we see drilling and route- 
marching day by day are capable of the exertions 
involved in a strenuous campaign. But a very 
large percentage of them are quite capable of being 
made fit to serve in a home-defence army, and it 
is a feeble and shortsighted policy to give them the 
official cold shoulder and nip their enthusiasm in 
the bud. At the present moment they cost no- 
thing, and they are doing good and useful work. 
Is it expecting too much to suggest that their work 
should be encouraged with something a little more 
stimulating than a scarlet arm-band and a form of 
" recognition " which, upon close analysis, will be 
found to mean very little indeed ? 

There has been too strong a tendency in the past 
to praise, in immoderate terms, German methods 
and German efficiency. But, undoubtedly, there 
are certain things which we can learn from the 
enemy, and one of them is the speed and energy 
with which the Germans, at the present moment, 
are turning to their advantage popular enthusiasm 
of exactly the same nature as that which has pro- 
duced the Volunteer movement here. It is a 
popular misconception that in a conscriptionist 
country every man, without distinction, is swept 
into the ranks for his allotted term. This is by no 
means the case. There are many reasons for 
exemption, and a very large proportion of the 
German people, when war broke out, had never 
done any military duty. 

Travellers who have recently returned from 
Germany report that the Volunteer movement 
there has made gigantic strides. Men have come 
forward in thousands, and the Government, with 
German energy and foresight, has pounced upon 



THE PERIL OF APATHY 155 

this splendid volume of material and is rapidly 
licking it into shape. I don't believe, for one 
moment, the highly coloured stories which repre- 
sent Germany as being short of rifles, ammunition, 
and other munitions of war : she has, apparently, 
more than sufficient to arm her forces in the field 
and to permit her to arm her volunteers as well. 

Whether I am right or wrong, the German 
Government is taking full advantage of the patriotic 
spirit of its subjects, and there does not appear to 
be any good reason why our Government should 
not take a leaf out of the enemy's book. If they 
would do so and help the Volunteer movement by 
sympathy and encouragement, and the assurance 
that more would be done at the earliest possible 
moment, we should be in a better condition to 
meet an invasion than we are to-day, in that we 
should have an enormous reserve of strength for 
use in case of emergency. No doubt the military 
authorities, after the most careful study of the 
subject, feel convinced that our safety is assured : 
my point is, that in a matter of such gravity it is 
impossible to have too great a margin of safety. 
It is no use blinking the fact that, despite the 
efforts we have made, and are making, the time 
may come when the entire manhood of the United 
Kingdom must be called upon to take part in a 
deadly struggle for national existence. Trust- 
worthy reports state that the Germans are actually 
arming something over four million fresh troops — 
some of them have already been in action — and if 
this estimate prove well founded, it is quite clear 
that the crisis of the world-war is yet to come. I 
do not think any one will deny that when it does 
come we shall need every man we can get. 

Closely allied with the subject of invasion are 



156 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

the German methods of " f rightfulness " by means 
of their submarines and aircraft. Of the latter, it 
would seem, we are justified in speaking with 
absolute contempt. Three attempts at air raids 
on our shores have been made, and though, un- 
happily, some innocent lives were lost through the 
enemy's indiscriminate bomb-dropping, the military 
effect up to the day I pen these lines has been 
absolutely nil, except to assist us in bringing more 
recruits to the colours. Several of the vast, un- 
wieldy Zeppelins, of which the Germans boasted 
so loudly, have been lost either through gunfire or 
in gales, while we have official authority for saying 
that our own air-service is so incomparably superior 
to that of the enemy that the German aviators, 
like the baby-killers of Scarborough, seek safety in 
retreat directly they are confronted by the British 
fliers. No doubt the German airmen have their 
value as scouts and observers, but it is abundantly 
clear that, as a striking unit, they are hopelessly 
outclassed. They have done nothing to compare 
with the daring raids on Friedrichshafen and 
Diisseldorf, to say nothing of the magnificent and 
devastating attack by the British and French air- 
men on Zeebrugge, Ostend, and Antwerp. 

The submarine menace stands on another and 
very different footing, for the simple reason that 
luck, pure and simple, enters very largely into the 
operations of the underwater craft. It is quite 
conceivable that, favoured by fortune and with a 
conveniently hidden base of supplies — one of which, 
a petrol-base, I indicated to the authorities on 
March 15th — either afloat or ashore, submarines 
might do an enormous amount of damage on our 
trade routes. 

A few dramatic successes may, of course, pro- 



THE PERIL OF APATHY 157 

duce a scare and send insurance and freight rates 
soaring. Moreover, the submarine is exceedingly 
difficult to attack : it presents a very tiny mark to 
gunfire, and when it sights a hostile ship capable 
of attacking it, it can always seek safety by sub- 
merging. But, when all is said and done, the 
number of German submarines, given all the good 
fortune they could wish, is quite inadequate seri- 
ously to threaten the main body of either our 
commerce or our Navy. 

We are told, and quite properly, nothing of the 
methods which the Admiralty are adopting to deal 
with German pirates. But it will not have escaped 
the public attention that the submarines have 
scored no great success against British warships 
since the Hawke was sunk in the Channel. I think 
we may fairly conclude, therefore, that our Admir- 
alty have succeeded in devising new means of 
defence against the new means of attack. We know 
that at the time of writing two enemy submarines 
have been sunk by the Navy, and it seems fairly 
certain that another was rammed and destroyed in 
the Channel by the steamer Thordis. Whatever, 
therefore, may be our views on the general subject 
of the war, it seems clear that we can safely treat 
the submarine menace as the product of the super- 
heated Teutonic imagination. 

We know of, and can guard against, the risks 
we run of any armed attack from Germany. But 
there is another peril which will face us when the 
war is over — a renewal of the commercial invasion 
which we have seen in progress on a gigantic scale 
for years past. 

We know how the British market has, for years, 
been flooded with shoddy German imitations of 
British goods to the grave detriment of our home 



158 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

trade. We know, too, how the German worker, 
over here " to learn the language," has wormed 
himself into the confidence of the foolish English 
employer, and has abused that confidence by keep- 
ing his real principals — those in Germany — fully 
posted with every scrap of commercial information 
which might help them to capture British trade. 
We know, though we do not know the full story, 
that hundreds of " British " companies have been, 
in fact, owned, organised, and controlled solely by 
Germans. We know that for years German spies 
and agents, ostensibly engaged in business here, 
have plotted our downfall. 

Are we going to permit, when the war is over, 
a repetition of all this ? 

I confess I look upon this matter with the gravest 
uneasiness. It is all very well to say that after 
the war Germans will be exceedingly unpopular in 
every civilised community. That fact is not likely 
to keep out the German, who is anything but thin- 
skinned. And, I regret to say, there are only too 
many British employers who are likely to succumb 
to the temptation to make use of cheap German 
labour, regardless of the fact that they will thus be 
actively helping their country's enemies. 

Germans to-day are carrying on business in this 
country with a freedom which would startle the 
public, if it were known. I will mention two in- 
stances which have come to my knowledge lately. 
The first is the case of a company with an English 
name manufacturing certain electric fittings. Up 
to the time the war broke out, every detail of this 
company's business was regularly transmitted once 
a week to Germany : copies of every invoice, every 
bill, every letter, were sent over. Though the 
concern was registered as an " English " company, 



THE PERIL OF APATHY 159 

the proprietorship and control were purely and 
wholly German. That concern is carrying on busi- 
ness to-day, and in the city of London, protected, 
no doubt, by its British registration. And the 
manager is an Englishman who, before the war, 
explained very fully to my informant the entire 
system on which the business was conducted. 

The second case is similar, with the exception 
that the manager is a German, at least in name 
and origin, who speaks perfect English, and is still, 
or was very recently, conducting the business. In 
this case, as in the first, every detail of the business 
was, before war broke out, regularly reported to 
the head office of the firm in Germany. I wonder 
whether English firms are being permitted to carry 
on business in Berlin to-day ! 

Whether we shall go on after the war in the old 
haphazard style of rule-of-thumb rests solely with 
public opinion. And if public opinion will tolerate 
the employment of German waiters in our hotels 
in time of war, I see very little likelihood of any 
effort to stay the German invasion which will, 
assuredly, follow the declaration of peace. Then 
we shall see again the unscrupulous campaign of 
commercial and military espionage which has cost 
us dear in the past, and may cost us still more in 
the future. Our foolish tolerance of the alien peril 
will be used to facilitate the war of revenge for 
which our enemy will at once begin to prepare. 



CHAPTER X 

THE PERIL OF STIFLING THE TRUTH 

Ignorance of the real truth about the war — an 
ignorance purposely imposed upon us by official 
red-tape — is, I am convinced, the gravest peril by 
which our beloved country is faced at the present 
moment. 

I say it is the gravest peril for the simple reason 
that it is the root-peril from which spring all the 
rest. And this ignorance springs not from official 
apathy, or from the public wilfully shutting its eyes 
to disagreeable truths. It is born of the deliberate 
suppression of unpleasant facts, of the deliberate 
and ridiculous exaggeration of minor successes. In 
a word, it is the result of the public having been 
fooled and bamboozled under the specious plea of 
safeguarding our military interests. Are we children 
to believe such official fairy-tales ? The country is 
not being told the truth about the war. I don't 
say, and I do not believe, that it is being fed 
with false news of bogus victories. But untruths 
can as easily be conveyed by suppression as by 
assertion, and no one who has studied the war with 
any degree of attention can escape the impression 
that the news presented to us day by day takes on, 
under official manipulation, a colour very much 
more favourable than is warranted by the actual 
facts. 

160 



THE PERIL OF STIFLING THE TRUTH 161 

Day after day the Press Bureau, of course under 
official inspiration from higher sources, issues state- 
ments in which the good news is unduly emphasised 
and the bad unduly slurred over. Day by day a 
large section of the Press helps on, with every in- 
genious device of big type and sensational headlines, 
the official hoodwinking of the public. Many pay 
their nimble halfpennies to be gulled. A naval 
engagement in which our immensely superior forces 
crush the weaker squadron of the enemy is blazoned 
forth as a " magnificent victory " for our fighting 
men, when, in sober truth, the chief credit lies with 
the silent and utterly forgotten strategist behind 
the scenes, whose cool brain worked out the eternal 
problem of bringing adequate force to bear at exactly 
the right time and in just exactly the right place. 

I say no word to depreciate the heroism of our 
gallant bluejackets. They would fight as coolly 
when they were going to inevitable death — Cradock's 
men did in the Good Hope and Monmouth — as if 
they were in such overwhelming superiority that the 
business of destroying the enemy was little more 
dangerous than the ordinary battle-practice. My 
whole point is that by the skilful manipulation of 
facts a wholly false impression is conveyed. There 
is, in truth, nothing " magnificent " about beating 
a hopelessly inferior foe, and our sailors would be 
the last to claim to be heroes under such conditions. 
It is, of course, the business of our naval authorities 
to be ready whenever a German squadron shows 
itself, to hit at once with such crushing superiority 
of gunfire that there will be no need to hit again at 
the same object. That can only be achieved by 
sound strategy, for which we are entitled to claim 
and give the credit that is due. When our Navy 
has won a decisive success against great odds we 



162 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

may be justified in talking of a " magnificent " 
victory. To talk of any naval success of the 
present war as a " magnificent victory " is simply 
to becloud the real, essential, vital facts, and to 
assist in deceiving a public which is being studiously 
kept in the dark. 

By every means possible, short of downright lying 
of the German type, the public is being lulled into 
a false and dangerous belief that all is well — a blind 
optimism calculated to produce only the worst 
possible results, a state of mental and physical 
apathy which has already gone far to rob it of the 
energy and determination -and driving force which 
are absolutely necessary if we are to emerge in safety 
from the greatest crisis that has faced our country 
in its thousand years of stormy history. 

As an example of what the public are told con- 
cerning the enemy, a good illustration is afforded by 
a well-known Sunday paper dated March 7th. Here 
we find, among other headings in big type, the 
following : " Stake of Life and Death ! " " Ger- 
many's Frantic Appeal for Greater Efforts ! " 
" Russia's Hammer Blow." " German Offensive 
from East Prussia Ruined : Losses 250,000 in a 
Month." " German Plans Foiled : Enemy's 3,000,000 
Losses." " On Reduced Rations : German Troops 
Getting Less to Eat." "Germany Cut Off from 
the Seas." " Germans Cut in Two : 15,000 Pris- 
oners and ' Rich Booty ' Taken." " Killed to Last 
Man : Appalling Austrian Losses." " The Verge of 
Famine : Bread Doles cut down again in Germany : 
Frantic Efforts to Stave Off Starvation." 

And yet, in the centre of the paper, next to the 
leader, we find a huge advertisement headed " The 
Man to be Pitied," calling for recruits, appealing 
to their patriotism, and urging them to " Enlist 



THE PEKIL OF STIFLING THE TRUTH 163 

To-day." Surely it is the reader who is to be 
pitied ! 

Again, we have wilfully neglected the formation 
of a healthy public opinion in neutral countries. 
While Germany has, by every underhand means in 
her power, by wireless lies, and by bribery of certain 
newspapers in America and in Italy, created an 
opinion hostile to the Allies, we have been content 
to sit by and allow the disgraceful plot against us 
to proceed. 

We have, all of us, read the screeches of the pro- 
German press in the United States, and in Italy the 
scandal of how Germany has bribed certain journals 
has already been publicly exposed. The Italians 
have not been told the truth by us, as they should 
have been. In Italy the greater section of the public 
are in favour of Great Britain and are ready to take 
arms against the hated Tedesco, yet on the other 
hand we have to face the insidious work of Germany's 
secret service and the lure of German gold in a coun- 
try where, unfortunately, few men. from contadino 
to deputy, are above suspicion. We must not close 
our eyes to the truth that in neutral countries Ger- 
many is working steadily with all her underhand 
machinery of diplomacy, of the purchase of news- 
papers, of bribery and corruption and the suborning 
of men in high places. To what end % To secure 
the downfall of Great Britain ! 

I have myself been present at a private view of an 
amazing cinema film prepared at the Kaiser's orders 
and sent to be exhibited in neutral countries for the 
purpose of influencing opinion in favour of Germany. 
The pictures have been taken in the fighting zone, 
both in Belgium and in East Prussia. So cleverly 
have they been stage-managed that I here confess, 
as I sat gazing at them. I actually began to wonder 



164 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

whether the stories told of German barbarities were, 
after all, true ! Pictures were shown of a group of 
British prisoners laughing and smoking, though 
in the hands of their captors ; of the kind German 
soldiery distributing soup, bread, etc., to the populace 
in a Belgian village ; of soldiers helping the Belgian 
peasantry re-arrange their homes ; of a German 
soldier giving some centimes to a little Belgian child ; 
of great crowds in Berlin singing German national 
songs in chorus ; of the marvellous organisation of 
the German army ; of thousands upon thousands of 
troops being reviewed by the Kaiser, who himself 
approaches you with a salute and a kindly smile. 
It was a film that must, when shown in any neutral 
country — as it is being shown to-day all over the 
world — create a good impression regarding Germany, 
while people will naturally ask themselves why has 
not England made a similar attempt, in order to 
counteract such an insidious and clever illusion in 
the public mind. 

Such a mischievous propaganda as that being 
pursued by Germany in all neutral countries we 
cannot to-day afford to overlook. Our enemy's 
intention is first to prepare public opinion, and then 
to produce dissatisfaction among the Allies by sowing 
discord. And yet from the eyes of the British nation 
the scales have not yet fallen ! In our apathy in 
this direction I foresee great risk. 

With these facts in view it certainly behoves us 
to stir ourselves into activity by endeavouring, 
ere it becomes too late, to combat Germany's grow- 
ing prestige among other nations in the world, a 
prestige which is being kept up by a marvellous 
campaign of barefaced chicanery and fraud. 

The dangerous delusion is prevalent in Great 
Britain that we are past the crisis, that everything 



THE PERIL OF STIFLING THE TRUTH 165 

is going well and smoothly, perhaps even that the 
war will soon be over. In some quarters, even in 
some official quarters, people to-day are talking 
glibly of peace by the end of July, not openly, of 
course, but in the places where men congregate and 
exchange news " under the rose." The general 
public, taking its cue from the only authorities it 
understands or has to rely upon, the daily papers, 
naturally responds, with the eager desire of the 
human mind to believe what it wishes to be true. 
Hence there has grown up a comfortable sense of 
security, from which we shall assuredly experience 
a very rude awakening. 

For, let there be no mistake about it, the war is 
very far from ended ; indeed, despite our losses, 
we might almost say it has hardly yet begun. For 
eight months we have been " getting ready to begin." 
To-day we see Germany in possession of practically 
the whole of Belgium and a large strip of Northern 
France. With the exception of a small patch of 
Alsace, she preserves her own territory absolutely 
intact. Her fortified lines extend from the coast 
of Belgium to the border of Switzerland, and behind 
that seemingly impenetrable barrier she is gathering 
fresh hosts of men ready for a desperate defence 
when the moment comes, as come it must, for the 
launching of the Allies' attack. On her Eastern 
frontiers she has at least held back the Russian 
attack, she has freed East Prussia, and not a single 
soldier is to-day on German soil. I ask any one who 
may be inclined to undue optimism whether the 
situation is not one to call imperatively for the 
greatest effort of which the British nation and the 
British Empire are capable ? 

We are assured by the official inspirers of optimism 
that time is on the side of the Allies, and is working 



166 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

steadily against the Germans. In a sense, of course, 
this is true, but it is not the whole truth. I place 
not the slightest reliance upon the stories indus- 
triously circulated from German sources of Germany 
being short of food ; all the evidence we can get 
from neutrals who have just returned from Germany 
condemns them in toto. The Germans are a me- 
thodical and far-seeing people, and no doubt they 
are very rightly looking ahead and prudently con- 
serving their resources. But that there is any real 
scarcity of either food or munitions of war there is 
not a trace of reliable evidence, and those journals, 
one of which I have quoted, which delight to repre- 
sent our enemy as being in a state of semi-starvation 
are doing a very bad service to our country. The 
Germans can unquestionably hold out for a very 
considerable time yet, and we are simply living in 
a fool's paradise if we try to persuade ourselves to 
the contrary. If it were true that Germany is really 
short of food, that our blockade was absolutely 
effective, and that no further supplies could reach 
the enemy until the next harvest, it might be true 
to say that time was on the side of the Allies. But 
supposing, as I believe, that the tales of food shortage 
have been deliberately spread by the Germans them- 
selves with the very definite object of working upon 
the sympathies of the United States, what position 
are we in ? Here, in truth, we come down to a 
position of the very deepest gravity. It is a posi- 
tion which affects the whole conduct and conclusion 
of the war, and which cannot fail to exercise the most 
vital influence over our future. 

Speaking at the Lord Mayor's banquet last No- 
vember, Mr. Asquith said : 

" We shall never sheathe the sword, which we 

have not lightly drawn, until Belgium recovers in 



THE PERIL OF STIFLING THE TRUTH 167 

full measure all, and more than all, she has sacrificed ; 
until France is adequately secure against the menace 
of aggression ; until the rights of the smaller nation- 
alities of Europe are placed on an unassailable foun- 
dation ; and until the military domination of Prussia 
is wholly and finally destroyed." 

Those noble words, in which the great soul of 
Britain is expressed in half a dozen lines, should be 
driven into the heart and brain of the Empire. 
For they are, indeed, a great and eloquent call to 
Britain to be up and doing. Four months later, 
Mr. Asquith repeated them in the House of Commons, 
adding : 

" I hear sometimes whispers — they are hardly more 
than whispers — of possible terms of peace. Peace is 
the greatest of all blessings, but this is not the time 
to talk of peace. Those who do so, however excellent 
their intentions, are, in my judgment, the victims, I 
will not say of a wanton but a grievous self-delusion. 
The time to talk of peace is when the great purposes 
for which we and our Allies embarked upon this 
long and stormy voyage are within sight of accom- 
plishment." 

Every thinking man must realise the truth and 
force of what the Premier said. The question in- 
evitably follows — are we acting with such swiftness 
and decision that we shall be in a position, before 
the opportunity has passed, to make those words 
good ? 

There is a steadily growing volume of opinion 
among men who are in a position to form a cool 
judgment that, partly for financial and partly for 
physical reasons, a second winter campaign cannot 
possibly be undertaken by any of the combatants 



168 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

engaged in the present struggle. If that view be well 
founded, it follows that peace on some terms or other 
will be concluded by October or November at the 
latest. We, more than any other nation, depend 
upon the issue of this war to make our existence, 
as a people and an Empire, safe for a hundred years 
to come. Have we so energetically pushed on the 
preparations that, by the time winter is upon us 
again, we shall, with the help of our gallant Allies, 
have dealt Germany such a series of crushing blows 
as to compel her to accept a peace which shall be 
satisfactory to us ? 

There, I believe, we have the question which it is 
vital for us to answer. If the answer is in the nega- 
tive, I say, without hesitation, that time fights not 
with the Allies but with Germany. If, as many 
people think, this war must end somehow before 
the next winter, we must, by that time, either have 
crushed out the vicious system of Prussian mili- 
tarism, or we must resign ourselves to a patched-up 
peace, which would be but a truce to prepare for a 
more terrible struggle to come. Despite our most 
heroic resolves, it is doubtful whether, under modern 
conditions of warfare, the money can be found for a 
very prolonged campaign. 

I do not forget, of course, that the Allies have 
undertaken not to conclude a separate peace, and 
I have not the least doubt that the bargain will be 
loyally kept. But we cannot lose sight of the possi- 
bility that peace may come through the inability of 
the combatants to continue the war, which it is 
calculated will by the autumn have cost nine thou- 
sand millions of money. And we can take it for 
granted that the task of subduing a Germany driven 
to desperation, standing on the defensive, and fight- 
ing with the blind savagery of a cornered rat, is 



THE PERIL OF STIFLING THE TRUTH 169 

going to be a long and troublesome business. We 
are assured that the Allies can stand the financial 
strain better than Germany. Possibly ; but the 
point is that no one knows just how much strain 
Germany can stand before she breaks, and in war 
it is only common prudence to prepare for the 
worst that can befall. This is precisely what we, 
most emphatically, are not doing to-day. Thanks 
to the reasons I have given — the chief of which is 
the unwarrantable official secrecy and the wholly 
unjustifiable " cooking " of the news — the British 
public is not yet fully aroused to the deadly peril in 
which the nation and the Empire stand. 

The British people are, as they ever have been, 
slow of thought and slower of action. They need 
much rousing. And in the present war it is most 
emphatically true that the right way of rousing 
them has not been used. Smooth stories never yet 
fired British blood. Let an Englishman think things 
are going even tolerably well, and he is loth to 
disturb himself to make them go still better. But 
tell him a story of disaster, show him how his com- 
rades fall and die in great fights against great odds : 
bring it home to his slow-working mind that he 
really has his back to the wall, and you fan at once 
into bright flame the smouldering pride of race and 
caste that has done, and will yet do, some of the 
greatest deeds that have rung in history. Is there, 
we may well ask, another race in the world that 
would have wrested such glory from the disaster at 
Mons ? And the lads who fought the Germans to 
a standstill in the great retreat did so because the 
very deadliness of the peril that confronted them 
called out all that is greatest and noblest and most 
enduring in our national character. 

Is there no lesson our authorities at home can 
6* 



170 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

learn from that deathless story ? Are they so blind 
to all the plainest teachings of history that they fail 
to realise that the British people cannot be depressed 
and frightened into panic by bad news, though, such 
is our insular self-confidence, we can be only too 
easily lulled into optimism by good news ? If the 
autocrats who spoon-feed the public with carefully 
selected titbits truly understood the mental char- 
acteristics of their own countrymen, they would 
surely realise that the best, indeed the only, way 
to arouse the British race throughout the world to 
a sense of the real magnitude of the task that lies 
before them is to tell them the simple truth. We 
want no more of the glossing over of unpleasant 
facts which seems to be one of the main objects of 
the press censorship. We want the real truth, not 
merely because we are, naturally, hungry for news, 
but because the real truth alone is capable of stimu- 
lating Englishmen and Welshmen, Scotchmen and 
Irishmen, the world over to take off their coats, 
turn up their sleeves, and seriously devote their 
energies to giving the German bully a sound and 
effective thrashing. 



CHAPTER XI 

FACTS TO REMEMBER 

We have heard a good deal about " Business as 
usual " : it would be well if we heard a little more 
of the companion saw — " Do it now." For if this 
campaign, for good or ill, is to finish before the 
snows of next winter come, the need for an instant 
redoubling of our energies is pressing beyond words. 
In his gallant defence of the Press Bureau against 
overwhelming odds — few people share his admira- 
tion for that most unhappy institution — Sir Stanley 
Buckmaster denied that information was ever " kept 
back." So far as I know no one has ever suggested 
that the Press Bureau had anything to say about 
the circulation of official news : its unhappily directed 
energies seem to operate in other directions. But 
that it is keeping back news of the very gravest 
kind admits of no shadow of doubt. The official 
reports have assured us of late, with irritating fre- 
quency, that there is " nothin' doin'." Now and 
again we hear of a trench being heroically captured. 
But we hear very little of the reverse side of the 
picture, upon which the casualty lists, a month or 
six weeks later, throw such a lurid light. 
t Time and again lately we have read in the casualty 
lists of battalions losing anything from two hundred 
to four hundred men in killed or wounded or " miss- 
ing," which means, in effect, prisoners. Even the 

171 



172 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

Guards, our very finest regiments, have lost heavily 
in this last disagreeable fashion : other regiments 
have lost even more heavily. Now British soldiers 
do not surrender readily, and we can take it for 
granted that when a large number of our men are 
made prisoners it is not without very heavy fighting. 
One single daily paper recently contained the names 
of very nearly two thousand officers and men killed, 
or wounded, or missing, on certain dates in January. 
Where, why, or how these men were lost we do not 
know, and we are told absolutely nothing. The 
real fact is that the news is carefully concealed 
under a tiny paragraph which announces that a 
line of trenches which had been lost have been 
brilliantly recaptured. We are glad, of course, to 
learn of the success, but would it not be well for 
the nation to learn of the failure % Can it be sup- 
posed for an instant that the Germans do not 
know ? Is it giving away military information of 
value to the enemy to publish here in Great Britain 
news with which they are already perfectly well 
acquainted ? Is it not rather that in their anxiety 
to say smooth things the authorities deliberately 
suppress the news of reverses, and tell us only the 
story of our triumph ? 

The most injurious suppression of news by the 
Government has made its effect felt in practically 
every single department of our public life which 
has the remotest connection with the prosecution 
of the war. 

Take recruiting as an example. Recruiting is 
mainly stimulated, such is the curious temper of 
our people, either by a great victory or a great 
disaster. Failing one or other of these, the flow 
of men sinks to what we regard as " normal pro- 
portions," which means in effect that the public is 



FACTS TO REMEMBER 173 

lukewarm on the subject. It is perfectly well known 
that a specially heroic deed of a particular regiment 
will bring to that regiment a flood of recruits, as 
was the case after the gallant exploit of the London 
Scottish had been published to the world. And 
what is true of the regiment, is true of the Army. 
Yet with all their enthusiastic advertising for re- 
cruits, the military authorities have neglected the 
quickest and easiest way of filling the ranks : instead 
of telling our people in bold stirring words of the 
heroic deeds of our individual regiments, they have, 
except in a few instances, fought the war with a 
degree of anonymity which may be creditable to 
their modesty, but does no tribute to their intelli- 
gence. 

Turn the shield to the darker side i every re- 
verse has stimulated patriotism and brought more 
men to the colours. What, I wonder, was the value 
of the Scarborough raid as compared with the 
recruiting posters ? The sense of insult bit deep, 
as it always does in the English mind. The Kaiser's 
own particular insult — his jibing reference to 
" General French's contemptible little Army " — 
probably did more to rouse the fighting blood of 
our men than all the German attacks. The splendid 
story of the retreat from Mons flushed our hearts to 
pride, and men poured to the colours. Is there no 
lesson here for the wiseacres of Whitehall ? Does 
the knowledge that Englishmen may be led, but 
cannot be driven, convey nothing to them ? Are 
they unaware that the Englishman is the worst 
servant in the world if he is not trusted, but the 
very best if full confidence is extended to him ? 
Can they not see that their foolish policy of sup- 
pressing ugly facts is, day by day, breeding greater 
distrust and apathy ? 



174 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

I oonfess to feeling very strongly on the Clyde 
strikes, which, for a wretched industrial dispute — 
probably engineered by German secret agents — 
held up war material of which we stood in the 
gravest need. I cannot understand how Scots- 
men, belonging to a nation which has proved its 
glorious valour on a hundred hard-fought fields, 
could have ceased work when they were assured 
that their claims would be investigated by an im- 
partial tribunal. The bare idea, to me, is as shock- 
ing as it must be to most people. And I can only 
hope and believe that the action the men took is 
mainly attributable to the simple fact that they 
did not understand the real gravity of the position • 
that they did not appreciate the desperate character 
of our need, and that they utterly failed to realise 
that to cease work at such a time was as truly 
desertion in the face of the enemy as if they had 
been soldiers on duty in the trenches. I confess 
I would rather think this than put the cause down 
to laziness, or lack of patriotism, or drink. But 
if this, indeed, be the real cause — a lack of know- 
ledge of the essential facts of the situation — whom 
have we to thank ? Those, surely, who have 
cozened a great people with fair words ; those, 
surely, who have spoken as though our enemy were 
in desperate straits, that all goes well, and that the 
war will soon be over. 

With regard to the alien peril, it is a source of 
great gratification to me that His Majesty's Govern- 
ment have adopted my suggestion of closing the 
routes to Holland to all who cannot furnish to the 
Foreign Office guarantees of their bona fides. In my 
book, "German Spies in England," I suggested this 
course, and in addition, that the intending traveller 
should apply personally for a permit, that he 



FACTS TO REMEMBER 175 

should furnish a photograph of himself, his pass- 
port, his certificate of registration, if an alien, and 
two references from responsible British individuals 
stating the reason for the journey and the nature 
of the business to be transacted. Within a fort- 
night of the publication of my suggestion the 
Government adopted it, and have established a 
special department at the Home Office for the pur- 
pose of interviewing all intending to leave England 
for Holland. The regulations are now most strin- 
gent. And, surely, not before they were required. 

Thus one step has been taken to reduce the 
enemy alien peril. But more remains to be done. 
If we wish to end it, once and for all, we should 
follow the example of our Allies, the Russians, who 
were well aware of the network of spies spread over 
their land. In Russia every German, whether 
naturalised or not, has been interned, every Ger- 
man woman and child has been sent out of the 
country, and all property belonging to German 
companies, or individuals, has been confiscated for 
ever by the Government. 

One result of this confiscation is that factories in 
first-class condition can now be purchased from 
the Russian Government for what the bricks are 
worth. In addition, there is a fine upon all persons 
heard speaking German in public. In the opinion 
of Russians, Germany was, as in England, a kind 
of octopus, and now they have the opportunity 
they have thrown it off for ever. Why should we 
still pursue the policy of the kid-glove and allow 
the peril to daily increase when the Government 
could, by a stroke of the pen, end it for ever, as 
Russia has done ? 

Now there is one remedy, and only one, for the 
national apathy. The truth must be told, and 



176 BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL 

with all earnestness I beg of my readers, each as 
opportunity offers, to do all in his power to stimu- 
late public opinion in the right direction until the 
demand for the truth becomes so universal, and so 
insistent, that no Government in this country can 
afford to ignore it. Many Members of Parliament 
have appealed in vain ; the great newspapers have 
fought unweariedly for the cause of honesty and 
common sense. The real remedy lies in the hands 
of the people. Democracy may not bring us 
unmixed blessings, but it does, at least, mean that, 
in the long run, the will of the people must rule. 
If the people insist on the truth, the truth must be 
told, and in so insisting the people of England, I 
firmly believe, will be doing a great work for them- 
selves, for our Empire, and for the cause of 
civilisation. 

They will be working for the one thing necessary 
above all others to hearten the strong, to strengthen 
the weak, to resolve the hesitation of the doubters, 
to nerve Britons as a whole for a stupendous effort 
which shall bring nearer, by many months, the final 
obliteration of the greatest menace which has ever 
confronted civilisation — the infamous doctrine that 
might is right, that faith and honour are but scraps 
of paper, that necessity knows no law but the law 
of self-interest, that the plighted word of a great 
nation can be heedlessly broken, and that the 
moral reprobation of humanity counts for nothing 
against material success. 

THE END 



Printed by Hatell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 



A clear account of how the present burdens 
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THE CURE FOR 
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NEW SIX SHILLING NOVELS 



The Sails of Life 

A Gentlewoman of France 

The Prussian Terror 

Greater than the Greatest 

The Heiress of Swallowcliffe 

Herndale's Heir 

The Persistent Lovers 

Passion and Faith 

Three Gentlemen from New 
Caledonia 

The House of Many Mirrors 

The Creeping Tides 

The Old Order Changeth 

On Desert Altars 

The Black Lake 

Miss Billy's Decision 

Miss Billy Married 

The Ink-Slinger 

The School for Lovers 

Fantomas 

Tainted Gold 



Cecil Adair 
Rene Boylesve 
Alexandre Dumas 
Hamilton Drummond 
E. Everett-Green 
E. Everett-Green 
A. Hamilton Gibbs 
Dorothea Gerard 
R. D. Hemingway and 
Henry de Halsalle 

Violet Hunt 

Kate Jordan 

Archibald Marshall 

Norma Lorimer 

Sir William Magnay, Bart. 

Eleanor H. Porter 

Eleanor H. Porter 

"Rita" 

E. B. de Rendon 

Pierre Souvestre and Marcel 

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NEW TITLES. 



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Love Besieged 

A Benedick in Arcady 

Justice of the King 

The Man in Possession 

A Will in a Well 

Edward and I and Mrs. Honeybun 

Priscilla of the Good Intent 

Fatal Thirteen 

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A Woman's Error 

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At the Eleventh Hour 

Love's Mask 

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White Abbey 

Heart of his Heart 

The Wonder of Love 

Co- Heiresses 

The Evolution of Katherine 

The Love of His Life 

A Charity Girl 

The House of Sunshine 

Dare and Do 

Beneath a Spell 

The Man She Married 

The Mistress of the Farm 

Little Lady Charles 

A Splendid Destiny 

Cornelius 

Traffic 

St. Elmo 

Indiscretions 

The Trickster 

The City of the Golden Gate 

Shoes of Gold 

Adventures of a Pretty Woman 

Troubled Waters 

The Human Boy Again 

Stolen Honey 



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THE PRINCESS MATHILDE BONAPARTE 

By Philip W. Sergeant, Author of " The East Empress 
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Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, the niece of the great Emperor, died 
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FROM JUNGLE TO ZOO 

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THE ADMIRABLE PAINTER : A study of Leonardo 
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These notebooks form the groundwork of Mr. Anderson's fascinating 
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WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA 

By Lieut. -Col. Andrew C. P. Haggard, D.S.O., Author 

of " Remarkable Women of France, 1431— 1749," etc. 

Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, fully illustrated, 16/- net. 

Lieut.-Col. Haggard has many times proved that history can 

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whose more or less erratic careers influenced, by their love of display, 

the outbreak which culminated in the Reign of Terror. Most of them 

lived till after the beginning of t;he Revolution, and some, like Marie 

Antoinette, TMroigne de Mericourt and Madame Roland, were sucked 

down in the maelstrom which their own actions had intensified. 



THE MEMOIRS OF THE DUKE de ST. SIMON 

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BY THE WATERS OF GERMANY 

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BY THE WATERS OF SICILY 

By Norma Lorimer, Author of "By the Waters of 
Germany," etc. 

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THE NEW FRANCE, Being a History fboaTthe 

ACCESSION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE IN 1830 TO THE 

Revolution of 1848, with Appendices 
By Alexandre Dumas. Translated into English, with 

an introduction and notes by R. S. Garnett. 
In two volumes, Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, profusely illus 
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after famous artists. 24/- net. 

The map of Europe is about to be altered. Before long we shall be 
engaged in the marking out. This we can hardly follow with success 
unless we possess an intelligent knowledge of the history of our Allies. 
It is a curious fact that the present generation is always ignorant of 
the history of that which preceded it. Everyone or nearly everyone has 
read a history — Carlyle's or some other — of the French "Revolution of 
1789 to 1800 ; very few seem versed in what followed and culminated 
in the revolution of 1848, which was the continuation of the first. 

Both revolutions resulted from an idea — the idea of the people. In 
1789 the people destroyed servitude, ignorance, privilege, monarchical 
despotism ; in 1848 they thrust aside representation by the few and a 
Monarchy which served its own interests to the prejudice of the country. 
It is impossible to understand the French Republic of to-day unless 
the struggle in 1848 be studied : for every profound revolution is 
an evolution. 

A man of genius, the author of the most essentially French book, 
both in its subject and treatment, that exists (its name is The Three 
Musketeers) took part in this second revolution, and having taken part 
in it, he wrote its history. Only instead of calling his book what it was 
— a history of France for eighteen years — that is to say from the 
accession of Louis Philippe in 1830 to his abdication in 1848 — he called 
it The Last King of the French. An unfortunate title, truly, for while 
the book was yet a new one the " last King" was succeeded by a man 
who, having been elected President, made himself Emperor. It will 
easily be understood that a book with such a title by a republican was 
not likely to be approved by the severe censorship of the Second 
Empire. And, in fact, no new edition of the book has appeared for 
sixty years, although its republican author was Alexandre Dumas. 

During the present war the Germans have twice marched over his 
grave at Villers Cotterets, near Soissons, where he sleeps with his brave 
father General Alexandre Dumas. The first march was en route for 
Paris ; the second was before the pursuit of our own and the French 
armies, and while these events were taking place the first translation of 
his long neglected book was being printed in London. Habent sua fata 
tibelli. 

Written when the fame of its brilliant author was at its height, this 
book will be found eminently characteristic of him. Although a 
history composed with scrupulous fidelity to facts, it is as amusing as a 
romance. Wittily written, and abounding in life and colour, the long 
narrative takes the reader into the battlefield, the Court and the Hotel 
de Ville with equal success. Dumas, who in his early days occupied a 
desk in the prince's bureaux, but who resigned it when the Due 
d'Orleans became King of the French, relates much which it is curious 
to read at the present time. To his text, as originally published, are 
added as Appendices some papers from his pen relating to the history 
of the time, which are unknown in England. 



CROQUET 

By the Rt. Hon. Lord Tollbmache. 

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THE JOLLY DUCHESS: Harriot, Duchess of 
St. Albans. Fifty Years' Record of Stage and 
Society (1787-1837) 
By Charles E. Pearce, Author of " Polly Peachum," 

etc. 
Demy Svo, cloth gilt, fully illustrated, 16/- net. 
Mr. Charles E. Pearce tells in a lively, anecdotal style the story of 
Harriot Mellon, who played merry, hoydenish parts before the foot- 
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SIR HERBERT TREE AND THE MODERN 
THEATRE : A Discursive Biography 
By Sidney Dark, Author of "The Man Who Would 
not be King," etc. 

Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, fully illustrated, 10/6 net. 
Mr. Sidney Dark, the well-known literary and dramatic critic, has 
written a fascinating character-study of Sir Herbert Tree both as actor 
and as man, and he has used the striking personality of his subject as 
a text for a comprehensive survey and criticism of the modern 
English stage and its present tendencies. Mr. Dark's opinions have 
always been distinctive and individual, and his new book is outspoken, 
witty, and brilliantly expressed. 

THE MASTER PROBLEM 

By James Marchant, F.R.S. Ed., Author of V Dr. 
Paton," and editor of " Prevention," etc. With an 
Introduction by the Rev. F. B. Meyer, D.D. 

Crown Svo, cloth gilt, 5/- net. 
This book deals with the social evil, its causes and its remedies. 
Necessarily, the writer is compelled to present many aspects of the 
case, and to describe persons and scenes which he has encountered, 
as Director of the National Council of Public Morals, in America, India, 
Europe, the Colonies, etc. ; the overruling object of the book, however, 
is the more difficult and more useful task of discovering the root causes 
of this vice and of suggesting lasting remedies. 



THE FRIEND OF FREDERICK THE GREAT: The 

Last Earl Marischall of Scotland 

By Edith E. Cuthell, F.R.Hist.S., Author o* "A 

Vagabond Courtier," etc. 
Demy Svo, cloth gilt, fully illustrated, 2 vols, 24/- net 
George Keith, a gallant young colonel of Life Guards under Marl- 
borough and Ormonde, fought at Sheriffmuir, led the ill-fated Jacobite 
expedition from Spain, and was a prominent figure in all the Jacobite 
plottings before and after the '45. He was the ambassador and friend 
of Frederick the Great and the friend and correspondent of Voltaire, 
Hume, Rousseau and d'Alembert. This excellent biography is to be 
followed later by a work on James Keith, Frederick the Great's Field- 
Marshal, who was killed in attempting to retrieve the reverse of 
Hochkeich. 

GAIETY AND GEORGE GROSSMITH : Random 
Reflections on the Serious Business of Enjoy- 
ment 
By Stanley Naylor. 

Crown Svo, cloth gilt, with a coloured frontispiece, and 50 
other illustrations, 5/- net. 
Here is Mr. George Grossmith in his moments of leisure, laughing, 
joking, relating anecdotes (personal and otherwise), criticising people 
and places, and generally expressing a philosophy which has serious 
truth behind it, but nevertheless bubbles over here and there with 
humour. Through his " Boswell," Mr. Stanley Naylor, he talks of 
*' Love Making on the Stage and Off," " The Difference Between a 
Blood and a Nut," " The Ladies of the Gaiety," and other similar 
subjects. Mr. Grossmith in this book is as good as " Gee-Gee " at the 
Gaiety. What more need be said ? 

THE HISTORY OF GRAVESEND : From Prehistoric 

TIMES TO THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

By Alex. J. Philip. 

Edition limited to 365 sets, signed by the Author. 

In four vols., 9f x 6J, bound in sealskin, fully 

illustrated, 12/6 net each volume. 

The first volume of this important work is now ready. On historical 

grounds it is of value not only to those interested in Gravesend and its 

surroundings, but to the wider circle interested in the Britons, Romans, 

and Anglo-Saxons, and their life in this country. It also deals with 

the early history of the River Thames. 

AUGUST STRINDBERG : The Spirit of Revolt 

By L. Lind-af-Hageby. 

Crown Svo, cloth gilt, with many illustrationv, 6/- net. 
This book tells Strindberg's biography, criticises and explains his 
many writings, and describes truly yet sympathetically the struggles 
and difficulties of his life and the representativeness and greatness 
in him and his work. Miss Hageby has written a fascinating book ea 
a character of great interest. 



NAPOLEON IN EXILE AT ELBA (1814-1815) 

By Norwood Young, Author of " The Growth of 

Napoleon," etc. ; with a chapter on the Iconography 

by A. M. Broadley. 

Demy Svo, cloth gilt, with coloured frontispiece and 50 

illustrations (from the collection of A. M. Broadley), 

21/- net. 

This work gives a most interesting account of Napoleon's residence 

in the Isle of Elba after his abdication at Fontainebleau on April 11th, 

1814. Both Mr. Young and Mr. A. M. Broadley are authorities on 

Napoleonic history, and Mr. Broadley's unrivalled collection of MSS. 

and illustrations has been drawn upon for much valuable information. 

NAPOLEON IN EXILE AT ST. HELENA (1815-1821) 
By Norwood Young, Author of " Napoleon in Exile 

at Elba," " The Story of Rome," etc. 
In two volumes, demy Svo, cloth gilt, with two coloured 
frontispieces and one hundred illustrations (from the 
collection of A. M. Broadley), 32/- net. 
A history of Napoleon's exile on the island of St. Helena after his 
defeat at Waterloo, June 18th, 1815. The author is a very thorough 
scholar and has spent four years' work on these two books on Napoleon 
in Exile. He has studied his subject on the spot as well as in France 
and England, and gives a very informative study of the least-known 
period of Napoleon's life. 

TRAINING FOR THE TRACK, FIELD & ROAD 

By Harry Andrews, Official Trainer to the A. A. A., 
etc. 

Crown Svo, cloth, with illustrations, 2/- net. 

The athlete, " coming and come," has in this volume a training 
manual from the brain and pen of our foremost athlete trainer to-day. 
Every runner knows the name of Harry Andrews and his long list of 
successes — headed by that wonderful exponent, Alfred Shrubb. It 
is, however, for the self-training man that the Author explains the 
needed preparation and methods for every running distance. This 
most authoritative and up-to-date book should therefore prove of 
immeasurable assistance to every athlete, amateur or professional, 
throughout the Empire. 

PAUL'S SIMPLICODE 

Crown Svo, cloth, 1/- net. 
A simple and thoroughly practical and efficient code for the use of 
Travellers, Tourists, Business Men, Departmental Stores, Shopping by 
Post, Colonial Emigrants, Lawyers, and the general public. Everyone 
should use this, the cheapest code book published in English. A 
sentence in a word. r 



THE MARIE TEMPEST BIRTHDAY BOOK 

Giving an extract for each day of the year from the 

various parts played by Miss Marie Tempest. 
Demy 18mo, cloth gilt, with an introductory appreciation 
and 9 portraits in photogravure, 1/6 net. 
Miss Marie Tempest is undoubtedly one of the most popular actresses 
of the English stage. She has created for herself a distinctive character, 
into which is weaved much of her own personality, and the charm of 
that personality is illustrated by these happy quotations from the 
parts she has played. The illustrations, show her at various periods 
in her theatrical career, while the introductory appreciation by Mr. 
Sidney Dark is especially illuminating. 

A GARLAND OF VERSE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 

Edited by Alfred H. Miles. 

Handsome cloth gilt, 2/6 net. 
A collection of verse for children. The pieces, selected from a wide 
field, are graded to suit age and classified to facilitate reference, and 
many new pieces are included to help nature-study and interest 
children in collateral studies. Never before has an attempt been 
made to cover in one volume such a wide range of pieces at so small 
a price. 

THIS IS MY BIRTHDAY 

By Anita Bartle. With an introduction by Israel 
Zangwill. 

Handsomely bound, gilt and gilt top, 756 pages, 2/6 net. 
Also in various leather bindings. 
This is a unique volume, being a birthday-book of the great, living 
and dead, whether poets, arists, philosophers, statesmen, warriors, or 
novelists. A page of beautiful and characteristic quotations is appro- 
priated to each name, and the page opposite is left blank for the filling 
in of new names. Everyone likes to know the famous people who were 
born on their natal day, and few will refuse to add their signatures to 
such a birthday book as this. Mr. Zangwill has written a charming 
introduction to the book, and there is a complete index. 

STORIES OF THE KAISER AND HIS ANCESTORS 

By Clare Jerrold, Author of " The Early Court of 
Queen Victoria," and " The Married Life of Queen 
Victoria " etc. 
Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, with portraits, 2/6 net ; paper, 2/- 
net. 
In this book Mrs. Clare Jerrold presents in anecdotal fashion in- 
cidents both tragic and comic in the career of the Kaiser vVilhelm 
and his ancestors. The frank and fearless fashion in which Mrs. 
Jerrold has deait with events in her earlier books will pique curiosity 
as to this new work, in which she shows the Kaiser as an extraordinary 
example of heredity — most of his wildest vagaries being foreshadowed 
in the lives and doings of his forebears. 



A NEW SERIES OF RECITERS 

96 pages large 4to, double -columns, clear type on good 
paper, handsome cover design in three colours, 6d. net. 
Also in cloth, 1/- net. 

THE FIRST FAVOURITE RECITER 

Edited by Alfred H. Miles. Valuable Copyright and 
other Pieces by Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Edwin 
Arnold, Austin Dobson, Sir W. S. Gilbert, Edmund 
Gosse, Lord Lytton, Coulson Kernahan, Campbell 
Rae -Brown, Tom Gallon, Artemus Ward, and other 
Poets, wits, and Humorists. 

Mr. Miles' successes in the reciter world are without parallel. Since 
he took the field in 1882 with his Al Series, he has been continually 
scoring, reaching the boundary of civilisation with every hit. For 
nearly 30 years he has played a famous game, and his score to date is 
a million odd. not out ! The secret is, he captains such wonderful 
elevens, and places them with so much advantage in the field. Who 
could not win with such teams as those named above. ? 

Uniform with the above in Style and Price : 

THE UP-TO-DATE RECITER 

Edited by Alfred H. Miles. Valuable Copyright and 
other Pieces by great Authors, including Hall Caine, 
Sir A. Conan Doyle, Robert Buchanan, William 
Morris, Christina Rossetti, Lord Tennyson, Robert 
Browning, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Max Adeler, and 
other Poets and Humorists. 

" An ideal gift for your girls and youths for Christmas. It is just as 
admirable a production for grown-ups, and many a pleasant hour in the 
cold evenings can be spent by the fire with ' The Up-to-date Reciter.' 
— Star. 

" A very handy collection of recitations has been gathered here by 
Mr. Alfred H. Miles. The Editor has aimed at including poems and 
prose pieces which are not usually to be found in volumes of recitations, 
as well as a few of the old favourites . . . The grave and gay 
occasions are equally well provided for. A sign of the times is here, too, 
shown by the inclusion of such pieces as ' Woman and Work ' and 
* Woman,' both from the chivalrous pen of the Editor." — The Bookman. 

*' A marvellous production for sixpence, excellent in every respect." 
—Colonial Bookseller. 



THE EVERYDAY SERIES 

Edited by Gertrude Paul. 

Books on Household Subjects, giving a recipe or hint for every day 
in the year, including February 29th. 

In Crown 8vo, strongly bound, 1/- net each, 

THE EVERYDAY SOUP BOOK 
By G.P. 

Recipes for soups, purees, and broths of every kind for a quiet dinner 
at home or an aldermanic banquet. 

THE EVERYDAY PUDDING BOOK 

By F.K. 

One of the most valuable cookery books in existence. It gives 866 
ways of making puddings. 

THE EVERYDAY VEGETABLE BOOK 
By F.K. 

This includes sauces as well as vegetables and potatoes. It gives an 
unexampled list of new and little-known recipes. 

THE EVERYDAY ECONOMICAL COOKERY BOOK 

By A.T.K. 

" Very practical." — Westminster Gazette. " Really economical and 
good."— World. 

THE EVERYDAY SAVOURY BOOK 

By Marie Worth. 

" A practical book of good recipes." — Spectator, 



CAMP COOKERY : A Book for Boy Scouts 
By Lincoln Green. 
' Crown 8vo, strongly bound, 6i. net. 

This is the officially approved book for the Boy Scouts' Association, 
and contains a clear account of the methods, materials, dishes, and 
utensils appropriate to camp life. It also describes the construction of 
an inexpensive cooking apparatus. 



THE LAUGHTER LOVER'S VADE-MECUM 

Good stories, epigrams, witty sayings, Jokes, and 
rhymes. In F'cap Svo (6j x 3£), cloth bound, round 
corners, 1/6 net ; leather, 2/- net (uniform with Diner's 
Out Vade-Mecum). 
Whoever wishes to secure a repertoire of amusing stories and smart 
sayings to be retailed for the delight of his family and friends, cannot 
possibly do better than get "The Laughter Lover's Vade-Mecum " ; 
and those who seek bright relief from worries little and big should take 
advantage of the same advice. 

THE DINER'S-OUT VADE-MECUM 

A Pocket " What's What " on the Manners and Customs 

of Society Functions, etc., etc. By Alfred H. 

Miles. In Fcap. Svo (61 x 3|), cloth bound, round 

corners, 1/6 net. ; leather, 2/- net. 

This handy book is intended to help the diffident and inexperienced 

to the reasonable enjoyment of the social pleasures of society by an 

elementary introduction to the rules which govern its functions, public 

and private, at Dinners, Breakfasts, Luncheons, Teas, At Homes, 

Receptions, Balls and Suppers, with hints on Etiquette, Deportment, 

Dress, Conduct, After-Dinner Speaking, Entertainment, Story-Telling, 

Toasts and Sentiments, etc., etc. 

A new Edition reset from new type. 

COLE'S FUN DOCTOR 

First series. One of the two funniest books in the 
world. By E. W. Cole ; 576 pp., cr. Svo, cloth, 2/6. 

The mission of mirth is well understood, " Laugh and Grow Fat " is 
a common proverb, and the healthiness of humour goes without saying. 

This book, therefore, should find a place in every home library. It is 
full of fun from beginning to end. Fun about babies ; fun about bad 
boys ; fun about love, kissing, courting, proposing, flirting, marrying ; 
fun about clergymen, doctors, teachers, ; fun about lawyers, judges, 
magistrates, jurymen, witnesses, thieves, vagabonds, etc., etc. It is 
doubtful if any man living could read any page without bursting into 
a hearty laugh. 

COLE'S FUN DOCTOR 

Second series. The other of the two funniest books in 
the world. By E. W. Cole ; 440 pp.. crown Svo, 
cloth, 2/6. 
Dr. tJlues had an extensive practice until the Fun Doctor set up 
in opposition, but now Fun Doctors are in requisition everywhere. 

44 The Second Series of Cole's Fun Doctor is as good as the first. It 
sparkles thoroughout, with laughs on every page, and will put the 
glomiest curmudgeon into cheery spirits. . . . it is full of fun." — 
Evening Standard. 



BALLADS OF BRAVE WOMEN. Records of thb | 
Heroic in Thought, Action and Endurance. 
By Alfred H. Miles and other writers. 

Large crown Svo, red limp, 1/- net ; cloth, gilt, 1/6 net ; I 
paste grain, gilt (boxed), 3/- net ; Persian yapp, gilt top j 
(boxed), 4/- net. 

*' Ballads of Brave Women " is a collection of Poems suitable for 
recitation at women's meetings and at gatherings and entertainments 
of a more general character. Its aim is to celebrate the bravery of women 
as shown in the pages of history, on the field of war, in the battle of 
life, in the cause of freedom, in the service of humanity, and in the 
face of death. 

The subjects dealt with embrace Loyalty, Patriotism, In War, In 
Domestic Life, For Love, Self-Sacrifice, For Liberty, Labour, In 
Danger, For Honour, The Care of the Sick, In Face of Death, etc., by 
a selection of the world's greatest writers, and edited by Alfred H. 
Miles. 

" The attention which everything appertaining to the woman's 
movement is just now receiving has induced Mr. Alfred H. Miles to 
collect and edit these ' Ballads of Brave Women.' He has made an 
excellent choice, and produced a useful record of tributes to woman's 
heroism in thought, action and endura^e." — Pall Mall Gazette. 

MY OWN RECITER 

Alfred H. Miles. Original Poems, Ballads and 
Stories in Verse, Byrical and Dramatic, for Reading 
and Recitation. Crown Svo, 1/- net. 

DRAWING-ROOM ENTERTAINMENTS 

A book of new and original Monologues, Duologues.. 

Dialogues, and Playlets for Home and Platform use. 

By Catherine Evelyn, Clare Shirley, Robert Overton, 

and other writers. Edited by Alfred H. Miles. 

In crown Svo, red limp, 1/- net ; cloth gilt, 1/6 net ; 

paste grain, gilt (boxed), 3/- net ; Persian yapp, gill 

(boxed), 4/- net. 
Extract from Editor's preface, " The want of a collection of short 
pieces for home use, which, while worthy of professional representation 
shall not be too exacting for amateur rendering, and shall be well 
within the limits of drawing-room resources, has often been pressed 
upon the Editor, and the difficulty of securing such pieces has alone 
delayed his issue of a collection. 

" Performances may be given in drawing-rooms, school rooms, and 
lecture halls, privately or for charitable purposes unconditionally, 
except that the authorship and source must be acknowledged on any 
printed programmes that may be issued, but permission must be 
previously secured from the Editor, who, in the interests of his con- 
tributors reserves all dramatic rights for their performance in theatres 
and music halls or by professionals for professional purposes." 




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